Multitasking speeds motion-control development

Baldor has launched a new version of its Mint system development environment to support the evolving needs of machinery and automation OEMs.

Baldor has launched a new version of its Mint system development environment to support the evolving needs of machinery and automation OEMs.

Already one of the most popular motion control programming tools worldwide, the latest Mint-mt version incorporates new multitasking capability, a virtual machine environment, and high level commands for common applications to speed time to market.

Multitasking addresses the general pressure to reduce time to market, and manage escalating equipment complexity in the form of demand for more features such as graphical user interfaces, fieldbus and factory networking, and sophisticated safety mechanisms.

The multi-tasking kernel embedded in Mint-mt allows developers to split control software into modules, reducing complexity and allowing several programmers to work on the system simultaneously if required.

It also offers a means to reduce equipment costs in some applications by allowing one Mint controller to manage multiple stations for example.

The multi-tasking kernel is pre-emptive in operation, with a priority scheme to ensure that key tasks are performed deterministically.

Advanced software principles have been employed in Mint-mt to give OEMs further advantages.

A key introduction is the rewriting of the language in the form of a virtual machine environment.

This has particular relevance for larger OEMs as it strongly supports a 'program once' approach for the highly specialist motion control systems industry - allowing companies to choose the most cost effective Mint motion controller for any project or machine, and reuse standard software modules.

The virtual machine approach also brings a major speed advantage because it executes some two or more times faster than previous interpreted Mint code - even with the additional overhead of multi-tasking - providing a means to achieve higher throughput in many applications.

As with previous versions of Mint, applications can be developed directly using the native Basic-like commands - the syntax of which has been reworked to conform closely with the highly popular Visual Basic - or by means of a Mint-compatible library which may be called from popular Windows rapid application development environments such as Visual Basic, Visual C++ and Borland Delphi.

A universal API based on ActiveX technology is employed for this latter approach, to further enhance ease of use.

Moreover, the Windows DCOM (Distributed COM) standard is supported, allowing master programs to make calls to client Mint-mt applications remotely via TCP-IP networks.

This feature makes Mint ideal for exploiting the trend to Ethernet-based factory networking, and makes it easy for example, to pass status information back to supervisory PC, or run diagnostics remotely.

Another important new feature for software developers is the introduction of a browser-like file window called Program Navigator in the programmer's 'workbench'.

This provides a simple tree structured display of the program's sub routines, events, tasks etc - greatly aiding comprehension, navigation, debugging and maintenance.

Mint-mt is designed to support an extremely wide range of motion control tasks and needs - from small machine builders and automation engineers with limited programming experience and resources, to very large OEMs with their own expert motion control know-how.

Mint-mt can be employed in different ways to meet this spectrum of application and performance requirements.

At one extreme, users can employ the virtual machine environment directly - writing a few lines of code, and then running and optimising them within minutes.

This type of user is aided by powerful ready-to-use software for motion control, in the form of keywords for common movement tasks such as feed-to-length and flying-shear.

Mint-mt now has some 80 of these high level commands, which can be combined to create working application programs extremely quickly, providing powerful support for reducing time to market - especially for OEMs with limited engineering resources.

At the other end of the performance spectrum, advanced Mint programs can be developed using popular real-time programming environments, and embedded in the controller, or called as required from a host such as a PC.

For such advanced users, Baldor additionally offers an 'open architecture' interface to Mint-mt.

This provides a facility for users to define or customise the servo control algorithm and motion profiles - to extract ultimate performance from an off-the-shelf, general-purpose, motion controller.

The new Mint-mt is backwards compatible with Baldor's NextMove and MintDrive OEM and standalone controller ranges, and can be retrofitted by downloading the software into the controller's SRAM or Flash EPROM.

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