Motion Control is the key component of any beamline control system greatly affecting the capabilities of beamline automation and throughput. We have developed EPICS support for one of the most advanced controllers on the market -- the Turbo PMAC2-VME Ultralite motion controller by the Delta Tau Data Systems, Inc. Its key advantages include (a) the capability to synchronize on-the-fly motion of several drives thus allowing for fast on-the-fly scans of motor groups (b) modular design with fiber link greatly simplifying cabling, (c) capability to drive virtually any type of motors (DC brush & DC brushless servo, stepper, piezo, etc.) and control up to 32 axes, (d) provisions to write custom motion programs, define custom servo cycles and generally tweak any motion parameter. We have derived our EPICS driver for Turbo PMAC2 from the PMAC1 prototype successfully used at several APS beamlines; it was refined and made operational under both EPICS-3.13 and EPICS-3.14. The EPICS databases also derived from PMAC1 have been simplified and reduced in size by the factor of 10. This resulted in easily maintainable and configurable control system. It is important to point out that the user interface part of the databases was essentially preserved and the capabilities were extended; for example the speed controls were added. A capability of fast scanning with mapping any motor position to the output of one reserved PMAC channel that can be feed into a scaler has been demonstrated. This allows for scan times under one minute greatly improving beamline throughput.
Abstract File: abstract00111.txt
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