TECHNICAL SUPPORT
Published 2026-01-19
Imagine this scenario: you are debugging an assembly line, and three servos need to be synchronized in real time, but one of them is always half a beat slow. The data on the monitoring screen keeps jumping, but you can't find the problem - is it mechanical wear? Signal interference? Or is there a loophole in the control logic itself?
At this time, most people will check the circuit and rewrite the code from scratch, spending hours or even days. But is there a smarter way?
Mechanical systems are becoming more and more complex. Ten years ago, a simple PLC program could manage the entire production line; now, you may have to handle the torque feedback of the servo motor, the angle calibration of the steering gear, and the real-time data flow of the sensor at the same time, and make them all communicate smoothly.
The problem often lies here: you cram all the logic into a huge program. It's like using a water pipe to water ten flower beds at the same time. Once one link is blocked, the entire system is affected. Even more troublesome is having to stop the entire line when upgrading or debugging part of it.
This is why some people started to reconstruct the control system using microservice architecture. To put it simply, each functional module is given an independent "room". Let the servo motor control program run alone, start a new steering gear management program, and open another service for data collection. They communicate through lightweight protocols, just like neighbors saying hello on the balcony without having to enter each other's house every time.
But what are the practical benefits of doing so?
Debugging made easy. If the servo responds abnormally, you only need to check the few hundred lines of code for the servo service, instead of looking for a needle in a haystack of tens of thousands of lines of giant programs. Upgrades can be done one by one. Want the PID parameters of the servo motor? Just update that service alone and the rest will continue to function as usual. Expansion also becomes natural. Want to add a visual inspection station? Just deploy a new service and let it talk to the existing service.
Someone may ask: "This sounds like a software engineering concept, can it really be used in motor control?"
Absolutely. The bottleneck of modern mechanical systems is often not the hardware, but the flexibility of the control logic. The accuracy of the servo motor itself is high enough, but if the control program cannot respond quickly to changes, no matter how good the hardware is, it will not be of value. The microservice architecture allows each hardware unit to have an independent "brain", and the response speed is naturally faster.
Many people hesitate when choosing a technology stack. There are several unexpected points of convergence in using .NET Core to build such microservices.
Its cross-platform feature eliminates the need to worry about the operating system - whether it is Windows on industrial computers or Linux on edge devices, the service can run consistently. For mechanical systems, this means more freedom in deployment environments. Factories often encounter situations where various old industrial computers are mixed with new equipment. A unified development framework reduces adaptation costs.
The performance of .NET Core is sufficient for most real-time scenarios. The control loop of a servo motor is usually at the millisecond level, and a good microservice's request processing time can be controlled at the sub-millisecond level. There is still plenty of room left in between.
The more important point is the development experience. Mechanical engineers are typically not full-time programmers, and they need clear, maintainable code structures. .NET Core's strong type system and rich library support make writing control logic more like describing the mechanical behavior itself, rather than fighting with computer syntax.
How to do it specifically? It’s not about overturning the entire existing system.
You can start the pilot from a link that causes the most problems. For example, the "feeding servo control module" originally integrated in the master control program was extracted separately and turned into a microservice. This service only does one thing: receives the target angle command, drives the servo to rotate, and returns actual position feedback.
After running it for a few days, you will notice some changes. When debugging this servo, there is no need to stop the entire production line. You can restart this service independently, observe logs, and even temporarily modify parameters without affecting other units.
Next, the position loop control of the servo motor is also independent. Then, the sensor data collection is made into another service. Before you know it, you have built a small microservice cluster - each mechanical unit has its own "driver".
"Will this increase communication delay?"
Under reasonable design, the delay increase is often at the microsecond level, but the stability improvement is orders of magnitude. The control cycles of most mechanical systems do not require extreme microsecond-level synchronization. What is more important is that each unit operates stably without dragging each other down.
"Is it more troublesome to maintain multiple services?"
Quite the opposite. Imagine that engineers who originally needed to understand the entire large system can now focus on a specific service. When new people get started, they no longer have to face the daunting "epic" code base. With less code for each service, problems are easier to locate.
A production line maintenance master once said: "In the past, when there was a problem with the system, we had to call the software engineer from the office to the workshop to check it out together for a long time. Now many times, I can tell which service log is reporting the error at a glance - it's like knowing which gear in the machine is stuck, instead of the whole machine becoming a black box."
Mechanical design has long popularized the idea of modularity—standardized gears, bearings, and motors can be combined into machines with infinite possibilities. But the software that controls these machines is often written as an airtight monolith.
The microservice architecture is nothing more than extending the logic of hardware modularization to the code world. Let the control program of the servo motor become a standard part that can be independently replaced and upgraded like the servo motor itself. Let the steering gear management program be like the steering gear structure, concise, focused, and perform its duties.
When each mechanical unit also obtains "physical independence" at the code level, the system will have another kind of vitality. Failures are isolated, upgrades are smooth, and scaling is no longer painful. This is no longer a simple software reconstruction, but a re-understanding of the operating nature of the mechanical system through code - each part should have just the right amount of autonomy, and then achieve the overall goal in collaboration.
This is perhaps what modern mechanical systems should be like: hardware does its job, and software has its place.
Established in 2005,kpowerhas been dedicated to a professional compact motion unit manufacturer, headquartered in Dongguan, Guangdong Province, China. Leveraging innovations in modular drive technology,kpowerintegrates high-performance motors, precision reducers, and multi-protocol control systems to provide efficient and customized smart drive system solutions.kpowerhas delivered professional drive system solutions to over 500 enterprise clients globally with products covering various fields such as Smart Home Systems, Automatic Electronics, Robotics, Precision Agriculture, Drones, and Industrial Automation.
Update Time：2026-01-19
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