PMD Motion Control Solutions

About PMD

Performance Motion Devices, Inc. (PMD) is a Massachusetts-based motion control semiconductor and drive company. It develops Magellan® and Juno® motion control ICs, ION®/CME digital drives, Prodigy®/CME machine controller boards, and Atlas™ digital amplifiers — hardware and software solutions specialized for precisely driving and controlling brushless DC, brush DC, and stepper motors.

Drawing on more than 30 years of motion control expertise, PMD's technology controls over 6 million motors worldwide and ships to thousands of OEM customers. Its products have exceptionally long lifecycles — it still supports ICs first released in 1992 — and it holds ISO 9001:2015 and ISO 13485:2016 certifications.

Key Markets

• Lab Automation
• Industrial
• Semiconductor
• Mobile Robotics
• Medical

Dedicated Technical Support

PMD supports customers worldwide across the full engineering process — pre-sales motion consulting, schematic review, motor tuning support, and software development assistance. The CEO of Logosol Inc., an actual PMD customer, has described how PMD continuously customized its technology and adjusted designs to fit Logosol's requirements across multiple product generations, providing close, hands-on support throughout.

Trusted by Global Companies

According to PMD's own corporate materials, PMD's motion control technology is supplied to global companies across medical/biotech, semiconductor, and logistics/robotics fields. Companies named as PMD customers include BD, Abbott, Stryker, Siemens Healthineers, Agilent Technologies, Applied Materials, KLA Tencor, Amazon Robotics, Western Digital, and HP (source: PMD official corporate overview, as of February 2024).

The Portescap & PMD Partnership

In November 2024, Portescap and PMD jointly announced the PCR 56/06 EC SD developer's kit, combining Portescap's brushless DC motor technology with PMD's miniature ION®/CME N-Series drive, the Pro-Motion® software suite, an SDK, and the C-Motion® library. Portescap described the solution as answering customers' need to shorten development time, offering a clear path from prototype to production, while PMD said it lets customers minimize risk and development time with a proven, optimized solution.

Pro-Motion® includes an axis setup wizard, auto-tuning, and graphing capabilities that cut setup time from days to hours. Cited real-world applications include automated pipetting systems, liquid handling equipment, centrifuge control, ventilators, spindle control, robotic grippers, surgical robots, bionics, exoskeleton systems, seat and valve actuation, peristaltic pumps, autonomous mobile robots (AMR), and wafer-handling systems.

Beyond the Announcement — A Real Product on Portescap's Official Store

This partnership didn't stop at a press announcement; it became an actual commercial product. Portescap formally listed the PCR 56/06 EC SD controller on its official online shop (shop.portescap.com), under Brushless DC Motors > Brushless Slotted, selling it as a modular option paired with its brushless DC motor lineup. In other words, while it looks like a ‘Portescap-branded controller,’ the motion control engine inside is PMD's ION®/CME N-Series drive technology — a clear example of Portescap (motor hardware) and PMD (motion control semiconductors and software) combining their respective expertise into a single finished product.

Per the official shop product page, it supports Hall sensor or encoder feedback (quadrature, sin/cos, BiSS-C, SSI, pulse & direction), serial host and CAN communication, and easy setup with auto-tuning via dedicated configuration software. Rather than an off-the-shelf purchase, it's supplied via quote request (module-level customization) — reflecting that PMD's motion control technology isn't a standard catalog part, but is configured to order together with the Portescap motor to match the customer's motor spec and application requirements.

The official shop page lists these real-world applications:

• Auto-Injectors
• UAV/Drones
• Electric Grippers for Robotics
• Medical Analyzers
• Pipettes
• Power Hand Tools
• Radiation Treatment Therapy
• Surveillance Camera Systems for Aerospace

View the PCR 56/06 EC SD product page on Portescap's official shop →

How the Two Technologies Fit Together, Per the Joint Manual

The technical substance of this partnership is documented in detail in the jointly published “Portescap Motor Application Development Kit User Manual,” a co-branded document carrying both the Portescap and PMD logos on its cover. According to this manual, the controller board actually fitted into Portescap-branded motor development kits is an ION®/CME N-Series digital drive manufactured by PMD, built around PMD's Magellan® Motion Control IC, which handles the core motion-control computation — profile generation, encoder position feedback, position servo compensation, brushless DC motor commutation, and digital current/torque control. In short: the motor's exterior and mechanical design are Portescap's, but the ‘brain’ that actually drives and controls it is PMD's semiconductor and software.

The development kit ships with PMD's Windows-based motor configuration software, Pro-Motion®, and its C-based SDK, C-Motion® PRP II. The manual's connector wiring tables name specific Portescap motor models directly — for example, models in the ECT/ECP family (12ECP48 8B 21, 22ECP35 8B 184 01, 22ECT82 10B 15 01, 30ECT64 10B 11 01, and others) and the 20ECF14 family (20ECF14 8B 32) are specified pin by pin for how they connect to the PMD drive board's motor-coil and Hall-sensor connectors — showing these are model-verified connections, not generic compatibility.

PMD goes further still, pre-tuning the Magellan IC's control-loop parameters (current Kp/Ki, position Kp/Ki/Kd, PWM frequency, pole pairs, voltage/current limits, and more) for individual Portescap motor models and publishing them in the manual. Below are a few of the pre-tuned motor models actually listed in the manual.

In short, PMD's software doesn't offer generic BLDC motor support — it provides pre-verified servo gain values tuned to the characteristics of each individual Portescap motor model (pole-pair count, current limits, winding resistance, and more). It's a clear sign the two companies' relationship goes beyond a simple sales partnership, extending into joint engineering that verifies everything from motor design through control-algorithm tuning together.

PCR 56/06 EC SD Developer's Kit Specifications

PMD Product Lines

PMD offers motion control solutions across six broad product lines.

All Product Lines at a Glance

Motion Control System Architecture

A motion control system's signal path typically flows Host → Profile Generation (trajectory calculation) → Position Loop → Velocity Loop → Current Loop/FOC → Amplifier → Motor/Encoder/Load. PMD's product lines each cover a different portion of this chain.

Comparing Development Options

PMD's products come in three tiers, letting you trade off board-development effort against per-axis cost. All three share the same Pro-Motion®/C-Motion® software ecosystem, so migrating from one tier to another is straightforward.