The application was to wind a low cost inductive sensor array for a far east manufacturer. Though the component could have been wound by hand, the complexity of the winding made it difficult to maintain quality so a fully automatic winding machine was developed comprising:
The system was taught by setting a series of "waypoints" through which the wire dispenser had to move. Production time was a critical factor and to minimise it a method was developed to devise the best acceleration- and speed-limited movement profile through the waypoints. A commercial stepper motor controller was sought for to execute this profile but (because of the length and complexity of it) nothing suitable was then available. Consequently, a simple (but high speed) controller was designed to interface between the PC (which streamed the profile out) and the stepper drives.