Development
In co-operation with the mechanical workshop, we develop and build high-precision devices such as deflection units for laser, gamma or X-ray beams.We develop integrated circuits, such as various stepper motor cards, for control tasks here in-house, but also for "DAS PUMA", a three-axis spectrometer at the new FRMII research reactor in Munich-Garching. Depending on the requirements, they combine a power section for one to six stepper motors, as well as the evaluation logic for limit switches, reference switches for monitoring and controlling the subsequent electronics on one card. This card can be integrated into our control system via a serial data bus - Rs485. In this way, motor axles can be controlled via this common BUS system and their exact position can be determined via position analyses.
As such a development is very extensive, various tools are used. The first step is to create a circuit using a CAD system. Prototypes are also created in advance on breadboards in order to try out parts of a circuit. In order to create a circuit board from the finished circuit, the individual connections must be routed using a CAD system. Several layers of conductors are available here. In the picture below right, you can see the two layers of conductors by their different colours. Red is the top side and blue is the bottom side of the circuit board.
If the circuit board has its own intelligence, such as monitoring functions in this case, the firmware for the microprocessor is created on a development system. This so-called IDE (integrated development environment) enables the simulation of the processor in order to create the software step by step. Software and hardware development go hand in hand here. Once these steps have been completed, a film of the circuit board created in the computer is produced as a template for etching the circuit boards and these are then assembled.