BACKGROUND

A small manufacturer of equipment for producing window dressings has as one of their standard product offerings a machine used to manufacture vertical blinds. Original configuration for this piece of equipment consisted of an outdated Motorola Micro-Trainer controller running proprietary C code cross compiled to the micro trainer and stored in an onboard EEPROM. Motion was accomplished through the use of an old stepper motor drive.

PROBLEM

The drive had been discontinued and the manufacturer had used up its remaining stock. New drives were needed both for new sales and for field support. The manufacturer was concerned that a new costly design would have to be implemented consisting of a new drive, controller, and controller software. After attempts to find a compatible drive were unsuccessful, and finally learning that none existed, IAS was called for a solution.

SOLUTION

IAS found a stepper drive which met footprint size, power, and cost specifications. Providing the necessary cabling to connect the drive to the outdated microcontroller brought all hardware components into place. Additionally, this more modern drive supported some limited onboard programming, thereby allowing IAS to create a custom software interpreter. This software layer resides on the drive and allowed the microcontroller code to remain unchanged. IAS’ solution enabled the manufacturer to both continue production and simplify their field support by simply sending out a new preprogrammed drive and cable to their customer.

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