When do you stop handling multi axis motion in the PLC and use a dedicated motion controller?
Working on a machine with 8 servo axes and trying to decide how much of the motion architecture should live in the PLC.
4 of the axes need pretty tight synchronization, the others are mostly independent point-to-point moves. Everything will be EtherCAT, absolute encoders, and we’ll probably need some safe motion functions like SLS/SS1 as well. My first thought was to have the PLC coordinate everything, but once you start adding synchronized axes, faster update rates, diagnostics and safety I’m wondering if a dedicated motion controller makes more sense.
I’ve been looking at a few architectures but haven’t committed to anything yet.
Where’s the point where you stop treating motion as another PLC task and move it to a dedicated controller?
u/baseeeballlz — 8 days ago