Electronics with low-noise feedback and better powered amplifiers help boost the positioning-stage performance. The control algorithms are improving the accuracy of positioning and the throughput. In short, controls make more options than ever for engineers to do networking and correcting the motion of positioning-stage axes.

“The main advances in motion over the last decade have occurred in control systems and electronics,” said O’Connor. “Faster processors, state-of-the-art control algorithms, and more efficient electronics designs have enabled mechanical stage architectures that may have been impossible in the past.”

Considering the packaging-line integrators have no time to build multi-axis functions from scratch nowadays, these engineers need the robots that communicating simply and simple products flowing through a series of workstations. In an increasing number of cases, the answer is special-purpose controls. Part of the reason for it is the controls are far more economical than ten years ago.