A new hardware-in-the-loop simulator for CNC machine applications

This study focuses on an integrated software and hardware platform that is capable of performing (real-time/non-real-time) hardware-in-the-loop simulation of dynamic systems, including electrical machinery, CNC machine tools. In this approach, once the dynamics of the plant to be controlled is defined via C++ language, the resulting code is cross-compiled automatically on a PC. Executable files along with the necessary drivers are downloaded onto the composite hardware platform that consists of a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) along with a powerful DSP board. The paper elaborates the overall performance of this novel hybrid HILS platform on a CNC machine tool application.