Computers in Industry 20 (1992) 203-208
Elsevier
Applications
Modular CNC system for multi-axes
motion devices
Faisal Fadul and Louis Arnold
The Pennsylvania State University at Erie, Division of Science, Engineering and Technology, Station Road, Erie, PA 16514-0426, USA
Received June 25, 1991
There has been a great interest in :he design and develop-
ment of modular computer numerical control (CNC) units
which control and monitor several motion devices such as
stepper motors. Power integrated circuit controller/driver-
based multi-axes are extensively used in industry and other
market sectors with modular CNC systems. Existing commer-
cially available full circuit controller boards employ a com-
plete set of commercially available driver/controller chips for
each stepper motor. This paper describes how it is possible, by
using a single driver and multi-task efficient algorithms, to
design a low-cost controller for simultaneous and independent
control of multi-axes stepper motors. This will lead to less
power consumption, low cost, compact circuit, and a highly
reliable controller for CNC systems. The software developed
and the hardware testing were done using a 68000 Develop-
ment System Board with the Orental stepper motor PH264-
0213.
Keywords: Low-cost controller; Multi-axes; Stepper motors
1. Introduction
Modular CNC units are widely employed in
industry, military, and other market sectors to
provide monitoring and position control for vari-
ous applications. Examples of such applications
are control and monitoring'of in-process detec-
tion of tool wear and breakage, chatter detection
and avoidance, adaptive control of chip load for
Correspondence to: Dr. Faisal Fadul, The Pennsylvania State
University at Erie, Division of Science, Engineering and Tech-
nology, Station Road, Erie, PA 16514-0426, USA.
0166-3615/92/$05.00 © 1992 - Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. All rights reserved
203
maximum metal removal, geometric adaptive con-
trol for precision machining and in-process gaug-
ing [1-3]. To efficiently implement such tasks
they need to be carried out sequentially and
within short times.
Among the most popular motion devices are
stepper motors. Stepper motors have been widely
used in industry to provide accurate positioning
control for computer peripherals such as paper
feed mechanisms, x-y plotter positioning, and
floppy disk drives [4]. They are also used exten-
sively in commercial and military applications to
perform functions such as stirring, blending, and
mixing [5]. Stepper motors are used in motion
control systems to provide open-loop shaft posi-
tion control in fixed discrete increments without
the need for closed-loop servo control [6].
Cost is one of the long-standing concerns of
the power electronics that continues to retard
new motion control applications in industry and
other market sectors [7]. There is a need for
low-cost and new techniques to efficiently imple-
ment motion control for complex systems that
require the independent and simultaneously con-
trol of several motion control devices [1,7-9].
Multi-axes stepper motor controliers that control
one through eight axes are commercially available
[10-13]. Such controllers employ either multiple
commercially available controller/driver chips for
each stepper motor [13-15] or a specialized inte-
grated driver controller chip for one or multiple
stepper motors [1,11,15]. For example, the SGS
204 Applications
Electrical
hirer
Fig. 1. Protocol 1--Control of motion device block diagram.
L297/L298 chips set from SGS Corporation [15]
is commonly used to control direction, clock,
half/full, reset, enable, and reference current for
a stepper motor [15,16].
In this paper, it is shown that the above step-
per motor parameter can be independently and
simultaneously controller for eight stepper mo-
tors through a single L298 controller chip and
eight L297 drivers using a multi-task program
with a simple and low-cost microprocessor-based
Faisal K. Fadul has been an Assistant
Professor of Electrical Engineering at
the Pennsylvania State University in
Erie since 1987. He earned his BSEE
in 1979 and worked as a Testing En-
gineer for two years. He completed
his MS in computer science in 1983,
and PhD in electrical engineering in
1987 at The George Washington Uni-
versity and The University of Wyom-
ing respectively. Dr. Fadul is the au-
thor of several conference and jour-
nal papers and his general research
interests are in the areas of DSP and microprocessor-based
systems, motion control, and robotics, He has been serving as
a consultant in the area of microprocessors and microcon-
trollers. He is an active member of IEEE, ASEE, ISMM, and
lASTED societies.
Louis Arnold is an electrical engineer-
ing student at the Pennsylvania State
University at Erie, The Behrend Col-
lege. Mr. Arnold is the IEEE student
president at his college. He obtained
academic and hands-on experience in
control, electronics, and microproces-
sor-based motion systems at college.
Computers in Industry
Potmr
multi-axis controller board. The design can be
easily extended to control several motion devices
such as DC motors and solenoids through a single
controller since the hardware and software of the
proposed controller are written in a modular
fashion. The proposed multi-axes controller cir-
cuit will lead to less power consumption, smaller
size, low cost and increase in the reliability.
2. Current implementation
Power electronics integration provide a key
approach to reducing the cost and increasing the
reliability of future motion control systems [7].
There are two main protocols to control stepper
motors in industry. The first protocol, shown in
Fig. 1 [15], employs a complete set of commer-
cially available controller driver chips such as the
L297/L298 to control a single stepper motor
[13-16]. In this case the electronic power applied
to the motor flows through the power driver,
which is regulated under the authority of the
controller through a microprocessor, as shown in
Fig. 2. The second protocol, shown in Fig. 3
[1,11,12], employs a single integrated circuit, such
as the L6280, which can be used to control up to
three motion devices. In this case both logic and
power functions share the same physical package.
There are driving capability limitations imposed
on this type of chips due to problems that are
created with respect to single coupling between
the two functions as well as most of the chip's
volume being utilized for the power section [16].
Both of the above protocols have their own power,
Computers in Industry F. Fadul, L. Arnold / Modular CNC system 205

1,298

! Lt' ! t
p-lqqOCeSSOP
" ConttelleP ] D~iveP

Fig. 2. L297/L298 controller/driver set.

II I ilia

Comunds •, bivel,
Chip j.-
Fig. 3. Protocol 2--Control of motion device block diagram.
current, and motor parameter control limitations
[16]. This paper describes the implementation of
a muti-axes controller that can be used to simul-
taneously and independently control up to eight
stepper motors with a single controller (L298)
and eight drivers (L297). The concept can be
easily extended to control more and various types
of motion devices such as DC motors and
solenoids.
3. Proposed technique
This ~ection describes how the proposed con-
troller can be used to upgrade the performance
of the existing stepper motor controllers through
the use of a multi-task operating system. The
controller system consists of a hardware portion
designed around the Motorola 68000 micropro-
cessor and a software program written in 68000
assembly language.
3.1. Stepper motor interface unit
Several stepper motors can be independently
controlled and interfaced to the proposed con-
troller. Figure 4 skows a block diagram of a
stepper motor interface unit. U1 receives the port

U3 U6 , U9

Controlle~
!,297

~-processo~ I ~ = : 1 g__33

U8
Latch

])ecode~
To U98 g
NH U?

Fig. 4. Stepper motor interface unit.

206 Applications
address from the 68000 microprocessor. U2 and
U3 are 373 latches that represent a port in the
memory. A programmable port such as the 6821
PIA can be used for more flexible I / O opera-
tions. U4 and U5 are a buffer and a precision op
amp that enable the controller to have up to 32
current levels established for the L297 controller,
U6. U7 is a decoder that is used to select one
motor at a time. The output of the decoder goes
through a latch, U8, before enabling the L298
driver, U9. The latch helps in protecting the
controller circuit from any unforeseen circum-
stances due to the high voltage of the driver.
3.2. Software description
The system software, which may control eight
stepper motors, is written in 68000 assembly lan-
guage. It is possible to simultaneously and inde-
pendently control eight stepper motors since a
stepper motor requires a time delay between
each two simultaneous steps. Without such delays
the stepper motor will lose its current step and
therefore will react erratically [18]. For example,
the maximum speed (no torque speed) of the
Oriental stepper motor PH264-0213 is 850 pps
[16]. Therefol~, such motors require 1,176,470 ns
time delay in order to perform properly. The
clock frequency, f, establishes the smallest inter-
val of time within the microprocessor, called the
T time. The smallest interval of time to accom-
plish an instruction is called the machine cycle.
Each machine cycle consists of several T states
[19]. A state T is the basic time interval for
discrete operations of the microprocessor. Each
125
Clock
~nt~ol
$teppe~
~o~ l !
hla.q t i m /
Stepper Notor
TNinimmDelay
ine, Steppe, J
Noto~
Fig. 5. Real-time comparison for stepper motor.
Computers in Industry
state T is made up of two oscillator pulses for the
68000 microprocessor. Upon using 16 MHz crys-
tal the T state is 125 ns. The control of each
stepper motor requires a ten-bit control and
three-bit address identification (motor address).
The control part contains information regarding
speed, direction, full or half step, reset, enable
and five lines for current levels.
It is found that the microprocessor requires
3000 ns to execute the codes of the program
which is used to control eight stepper motors.
The processor also requires 3250 ns to execute
the codes for the screen handler. Since each
stepper motor requires 1,176,470 ns delay time
between each two consecutive steps, i40,808 ns
delay subroutine is needed. The real time rela-
tionship among the clock time, the time it takes
to control a stepper motor, and the delay time
which must be met for each stepper motor is
shown in Fig. 5. The data in Fig. 5 suggest that up
to 123 stepper motors can be simultaneously and
independently controlled with delay equal to 3250
ns. This is a minimum delay that must be in-
cluded in the program in order to ofset the branch
to REPEAT, since the branch instructions require
3250 ns to be executed. Initialization of the sys-
tem software is not shown. The label TABLE rep-
resents a memory address to a data table whose
16-bit locations each contain control and address
information about a single stepper motor. The
first ten bits of each memory location contain
control information about direction, clock,
half/full step, enable, and reference current (5
bits). The next three bits are used for address
information to select one of eight stepper motors
nseo
6250 nseo 1
[ ....
140000 nseo t
F ....
II I..
1176470 nse© t
[
Computers in Industry F. Fadul, L. ArnoM / Modular CNC system 207

through a decoder, U7. The last three bits are not same operating requirements. A multi-task oper-
used and may be utilized to select and control up ating system known as "round-robin" scheduling
to 32 stepper motors. The above description as- [16] can be used if the operating requirements for
sumes that the employed stepper motors have the the stepper motors are different or different types

I initalization 1
SP
)ata and
PointePs
Fo~ts

311mnse©
'1
Serve Noto~I1
14g8110nsec hlag

3250 nsec .~ TNnsre~control

to ?C

3ilinec Serve Ibto~ 112

14110Mnsec Delay

VB
3250 nsec

I
311Mnsec Serve Notor b~
|498g8 nsec klay

YES
3259 nsec

Fig. 6. System software flowchart.

208 Applications
of motion devices are used. Each task consists of
a subroutine to handle one of the eight stepper
motors. Figure 6 illustrates the flow chart of the
system software.
4. Conclusions
An efficient and practical analysis of a cost-ef-
fective modular CNC system is presented. The
controller is implemented using a 68000 Develop-
ment System Board with the Orental stepper
motor PH264-0213. The proposed controller sur-
passes existing commercially available controllers
in its power consumption, high reliability, lower
cost, compact size, and the numbe~ of motion
devices to be controlled. The proposed controller
software is capable of independently and simulta-
neously control up to 123 stepper motors. The
controller hardware is capable of controlling up
to 32 stepper motors.
References
[1] Y. Altintas and J. Peng, "Design and analysis of a
modular CMC system", Computers in Industry, Vol. 13,
1990, pp. 305-316.
[2] J. Tusty and G. Andrews, "Critical review of sensors for
unmanned machining", Ann. CIRP, Vol. 32, No. 2, 1983,
pp. 563-572.
[3] Y. Altintas, I. Yellowley and J. Tlusty, "The detection of
Computers in Industry
tool breakage in milling operations", ASME J. Eng. Ind.,
Vol. 110, 1988, pp. 271-277.
[4] M. Chiasson, "Control of a PM stepper motor by exact
linearization", in: B.C. Kuo (ed.), Proc. 19th Annu. Syrup.
on Incremental Motion Control Systems and Devices, 1990,
pp. 65-70.
[5] V. Deltoro, Electric Machines and Power Systems, Pren-
tice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1985.
[6] "High-power, dual-bridge IC's stepper motor drive de-
sign", Motion Control Application Manual, SGS-Thom-
son Microelectronics, 1988, pp. 61-67.
[7] T. Jahns, "Designing intelligent muscle into industrial
motion control", IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., Vol. 37, No.
5, 1990, pp. 329-341.
[8] T. Hisa and D. Bihn, "Universal six-joint robot con-
troller", IEEE Control Syst. Mag., 1987, pp. 27-32.
[9] S. Palmin, "Measurement and analysis of velocity control
for precision motors", J. Electron. Motion Control,
May/June 1990, pp. 14-16.
[10] Motion Controls for Automated Positioning, DCI, Inc.,
Franklin, MA, 1990.
[11] Application Note, ASM, Inc., Hudson, NH, 1990.
[12] Application Note, Arcomag, Inc., Wixom, MI, 1990.
[13] Application Note, Technology 80 Inc., Minneapolis, MN,
1990.
[14] F. Abbas and M. Ahmad, "Versatile controller for
multi-stepper motor operation", Computers in Industry,
Vol. 15, 1990, pp. 239-143.
[15] Industrial and computer peripheral ICs, Databook, SGS-
Thomson Microelectronics, 1988.
[16] "Application of integrated circuits to stepping motor
drives", Oriental Motor, 1990.
[17] P. Lawrence and K. Mauch, Real-Time Microcomputer
System Design, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1987.
[18] T. Kenjo, Stepping Motors and Their Microprocessor Con-
trols, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1984.
[19] MC68000 Microprocessor User's Manual, Motorola, 1989.