KINGSTAR Products Brief

KINGSTAR products are designed for industrial machines requiring motion control and positioning systems. KINGSTAR’s all-software approach sets it apart from other machine control solutions.

Using the EtherCAT standard; the power of Industrial PCs; and the Windows operating system, enhanced by hard real-time software that transforms Windows into a real-time operating system (RTOS), you can create software-only, PC-based machine controllers that lower the costs of industrial machines while delivering equal or better precision and performance.

There are two product lines: KINGSTAR Soft Motion and KINGSTAR EtherCAT.

KINGSTAR Soft Motion
KINGSTAR Motion software replaces costly motion control boards such as those from ACS Motion, Aerotech, Galil and others. KINGSTAR Soft Motion also supports CANOpen over EtherCAT further lowering the total costs.

Engineers customize the control system for their machine without facing the challenges of engineering real-time control threads required for high-speed precision. Engineers work exclusively in Windows in the "Open Loop" process and submit one or more commands to the motion kernel API, which handles the rest of the "Closed Loop" processing.

• Replaces expensive motion control hardware with lower cost motion software
• Provides APIs compatible with popular hardware motion cards
• Contains EtherCAT master and EtherCAT auto configuration
• Replaces proprietary network protocol and IO hardware with EtherCAT standard
• Enables use of EtherCAT-based servos which also offer lower cost
• All development can be done in Microsoft Visual Studio using managed code

Editions

KINGSTAR Soft Motion Pro

• Enables coordinated motion at 125 microsecond intervals
• Up to 3 cores for dedicated motion control
• Machine control API that delivers real-time precision and is 100% accessible from Windows Development Environment

KINGSTAR Soft Motion Entry

• Supports uncoordinated motion at 1 millisecond intervals
• 1 core for dedicated motion control
• Machine control API that delivers real-time precision and is 100% accessible from Windows Development Environment

KINGSTAR EtherCAT
KINGSTAR EtherCAT exposes the real-time interface that allows customers to integrate their own motion control algorithms or software. This solution is for customers that want to use CANopen over EtherCAT, but develop their own motion controller.

• Contains EtherCAT master and EtherCAT auto configuration wizard
• Provides RTOS capabilities for optimal thread management and prioritization
• Enables customers to move to EtherCAT, yet use their own motion control software
• Insulates machine builders from complexity of EtherCAT configuration
• Pre-integrates EtherCAT servos for plug and play compatibility
• All development can be done in Microsoft Visual Studio using RTX64 libraries with C or C++

The strength of this approach is that the customer has kernel level control of motion commands via a powerful Runtime that transforms Windows into a real-time operating system (RTOS). The resulting machine control is highly customizable and has hard real-time, high-precision capabilities.

Configuring the servo drive to work within the EtherCAT framework can be a major integration challenge for many implementations. Fortunately, KINGSTAR has pre-qualified and pre-integrated a number of drives. Drives can be swapped out or replaced without any reconfiguration because the KINGSTAR EtherCAT component automatically detects the change and reconfigures the system to ease the integration, or change of servo drives in your machine.

Editions

KINGSTAR EtherCAT Pro

• Enables coordinated motion at 125 microsecond intervals
• Up to 3 cores for dedicated EtherCAT IO
• Customer supplies machine control that snaps into existing CANopen over EtherCAT-enabled framework

KINGSTAR EtherCAT Entry

• Supports uncoordinated motion at 1 millisecond intervals
• 1 core for dedicated EtherCAT IO
• Customer supplies machine control that snaps into existing CANopen over EtherCAT-enabled framework