Printed circuit boards can be used in all fields, including motion control applications. The new CAD software can help designers create better schematic diagrams and layouts.
Gone are the days when “electricity” and “mechanics” became independent disciplines. Nowadays, almost all mechanical systems are equipped with some form of electronic equipment for monitoring, control or both. Printed circuit boards (PCBs) can be seen almost everywhere. PCB is composed of glass fiber-like substrate. Multilayer copper traces extend between connections on various electronic components, and the components are soldered to the top and/or bottom of the circuit board. These PCBs will be used in your motion control system to send commands, collect data, provide real-time monitoring and set restrictions and protection measures.
In many ways, the process of designing these PCBs is no different from mechanical design, but there are some key differences. Like mechanical equipment, PCB design requires the use of computer-aided design (CAD) software to create finished products from a set of components.
For PCB CAD, the first step is called “schematic design”. It involves adopting schematic symbols (the latest technical version of components that represent electrical work and connection, not mechanical packaging), and drawing lines (called nets) between all kinds of component connections to create working circuits.
The next step, called “layout”, is as important as schematic design, but it is usually just an afterthought. The layout part of PCB design uses CAD software again. In the layout stage, the dimensions of PCB are defined, and all components are positioned according to their mechanical footprint. Then those wires drawn in the schematic design stage will be routed in the physical copper traces on the final circuit board.
This is an example of how to set design rules in PCB CAD software (such as Altium Circuitmaker).
However, it is not as easy as it sounds. Many of these copper traces need different work. Some carry a large amount of current or voltage, while others carry low current and high frequency signals. In mechanical design, fasteners are similar to copper circuit traces, and have various sizes and grades. In PCB design, copper is only copper, but according to design rules, copper can be placed in different widths on PCB.
The design rules set in PCB CAD software will perform one or more of the following two operations.
They set the capacity limits of PCB manufacturing companies that will be used to manufacture blank PC boards. For example, if the house of your factory has a minimum tracking space of 5,000 (between lines) per day inch (5mm), your design rules and design rules check will ensure that there is no trace or space of you, which is too small for their process.
They can be used for rule-based design. Some software will automatically adjust the size of the trace according to the design rules you set in advance. With this type of software, if you want all the power and grounding traces to be 16 mm, you can set a network level with a width of 16 mm, and then assign the power and grounding networks to this network level. The software will automatically make any power supply and grounding grid 16mm wide.
Your design rules will be the intersection between what you need and what the factory produces. Some more primitive CAD software will require you to manually select the width of the through hole or copper trace (if you want its width to be different from the default value). As mentioned above, other software allows you to set a series of design rules and choose the width according to these rules.
It is a PCB mounted servo driver provided by Elmo Motion Control, a guitar. It provides top-level servo performance, networking and intelligent functions in advanced programming environment. Guitar has sinusoidal full vector control and trapezoidal and DC motor commutation methods. Such servo drivers installed on PCB provide PCB installability, high power function, rich motion function, programming flexibility, various feedback and CANopen network combination.
For example, you can specify that the width of power and ground wires is 16 mils, and the width of standard signal wires is 8 mm When you select a network in this network category, the CAD system will use these widths by default. The network is the connection from pin seven of chip U2 to pin one of diode D3. The category will be the type of network, such as power or ground or signal.
You will need to refer to your fab to ensure that they can build the products you need and get the final decision on its design rules. Some fabs, such as Sunstone Circuits, even have downloadable design rules for various CAD software packages. This makes the setup much easier. If you need pcb design solutions and pcb design business, please contact customer service.