Control systems in machinery equipment provide correction signals to motion units in order to reduce or cancel out the mismatches between sensor feedback signals and command or desired values. In this paper, we introduce a simulator for control characteristics of machinery equipment. The purpose of the simulator development is to provide mechanical system designers with the ability to estimate how much dynamic performance can be achieved from their design parameters and selected devices at the designing phase. The simulator has a database for commercial parts, so that the designers can choose appropriate components for servo controllers, motors, motor drives, and guide ways, etc. and then tune governing parameters such as controller gains and friction coefficients. The simulator simulates the closed-loop control system which is built and parameter-tuned by the designer and shows dynamic responses of the control system. The simulator treats the moving table as a 6 degrees-of-freedom rigid body and considers the motion guide blocks stiffness, damping and their locations as well as sensor locations. The simulator has been under development for one and a half years and has a few years to go before the public release. The primary achievements and features will be presented in this paper.
