Direct Motion

For AI agents: the Markdown edition of this page is software/dmserialmotion.md; the site index for agents is llms.txt.

DMSerialMotion, the .NET library

DMSerialMotion is the .NET library that runs DM hardware. Your program, written in C# or any other .NET language by you or by an AI assistant, calls it to open the control, register the axes and IO, home, move, run coordinated programs, read and drive IO, and record traces. The servo loop runs in DM's kernel driver at 20,000 cycles a second; the library plans ahead of it and your code stays ordinary .NET code. The examples on this site are C#.

using DMSerialMotion;

AddInHelper.SetupResolves();
DMControl control = DMControl.GetNewControl("MyMachine");   // one per process
DMSyncMotion motion = control.MainMotion;                   // the coordinated-motion group

DMAxisModual x = control.GetDMAxis("X");                    // axes by name (note the spelling "Modual")
DMAxisModual y = control.GetDMAxis("Y");
motion.AddSerialLink(x);
motion.AddSerialLink(y);
DMLogicalIOContainer io = control.GetSystemIO("MainIO");    // named inputs and outputs

control.PostAddedDevices();                                 // starts the 20 kHz stream
motion.LockAllAxis();                                       // close the loops
control.StopHard = false;

x.RemovePower = false;                                      // power on
bool ok = x.JogToLocationAndWaitForDecel(5.0 * x.MultiplyFactor, feed: 100);
Console.WriteLine($"{(ok ? "arrived" : "refused")} at {x.ActualAxisPosition}, error {x.PosErrorAxisUnits}");

control.Power.RemovePowerAndDischargeDC();                  // on exit
control.DeleteEverything();

What it gives your program
Axes Linear, rotary and spindle axes with any names. Power on and off, hold, absolute moves, velocity mode, endless rotary axes, moves that stop when the load passes a limit.
Coordinated motion A look-ahead planner with jerk control and smooth blending. Programs built from lines, arcs, feeds and dwells. Feed hold and overrides.
Kinematics A hook the planner applies to every point it sends to the drives, 20,000 times a second. DM's 5-axis heads run on it; so can a robot arm.
Homing Home switch and index pulse, one axis or several in parallel.
IO Named inputs and outputs with change events. Stop a move on an input. Read the position the driver captured when an input switched.
Safety state E-stop events, hard and soft limits, following-error and stall limits, per-axis fault counters.
Status Position, velocity, following error, current, bus voltage, temperatures, and a 20 kHz history per axis.
Tracing Trace messages and trace files that DM's tools analyze. Slow-rate monitoring of your own values.
Setup One-touch motor setup and servo auto-tune from code, settings saved per axis.
Add-ins A plug-in interface for features such as tool changers, doors and coolant.

How you get it

DMSerialMotion comes with DM hardware, under DM's end-user license. The license does not allow reverse engineering, decompiling or disassembling it. The library and DM's kernel driver ship together as a matched pair, for Windows on .NET 10.

We publish the real type and member names, the call order, the units and worked examples, so that you or your AI can plan and draft the program before buying anything. The complete list is in the API reference and the recipes. Both are written for AI agents and are plain Markdown; people are welcome too.

Know this before you plan