Method of the Simultaneous Multi-axis Motor Control for Actuator's Positioning

The article considers a combined hard and software method for generation of a high-determined control sequence of pulses for stepper and servo motors to perform multi-axis actuator's positioning which is typical for CNC equipment. Simulation in MATLAB/Simulink IDE is performed to predict possible distortion of control sequence in a case of pulse generation for two axes. Two variants of hardware implementation that have found practical application in commercial products are presented: the first one is for relatively simple motion control systems, which do not need complex multi-axis movements, and the second one is for the most complicated systems with up to 10 independent axes. The first implementation is based on STM32 microcontroller connected with Spartan-7 FPGA, while the second one uses a single SoC Zynq-7000, which provides a much more flexible solution (a PCB redesign is not needed while interconnection bus is located inside SoC itself). Examples of the hardware platform design are shown with the appropriate performance testing results.