Chuck Lewin, founder of Performance Motion Devices, admitted geek
From microcomputer gang member and robot enthusiast to motion control industry icon.
Chuck Lewin once bought twenty cheap electric hand drills to try and make a robot out of the motors inside.
In PD&D’s latest Electronic Fireside Chat, the founder of Performance Motion Devices (PMD) discusses the early PC game he developed to rival Breakout, his extensive past in motion control, and his role in a gang of microcomputer hobbyists.
PD&D Design Daily: How did you get your start in the business?
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Chuck Lewin: I was always a bit of a dreamer when it came to motors and robots.
As a kid I was fond of surplus sales, and once bought twenty cheap electric hand drills to make a robot out of the motors inside.
Like many projects taken on by a 15-year-old, that robot never saw the light of day - although I recently noticed that I still have a few of the motors kicking around in my basement.
At the professional level, I actually started in the more general field of real time control system design, and found my way to motor control later. It happened because I was hired to upgrade the software for a new step motor-based blood analyzer.
I also had the responsibility of upgrading a contraption that was being used to print & apply barcodes for the blood assay chemistry packs — even back then, the model was to break even on the machine, and clean up on the consumables.
The machine was a real whiz-banger, with high speed web controls and little lever arms to apply the printed labels to the pack. I got into a bit of trouble though when, just for fun, I changed the barcode image to a “test image” with champagne bottles & party balloons.
The owner nearly hit the roof! Unfortunately for this company, within a few months the 'Black Monday' crash of 1987 had occurred and the robot, printer, and the champagne packs were relegated to history.
PD&D: I once read that you used to “hang around with a small gang of microcomputer hobbyists.” Did you rule the mean streets of Winchester, Mass.?
Lewin: Winchester High School in 1978 was very unusual in that it had a minicomputer - the venerable PDP 11 - that could be used by students to program and learn BASIC.
The computer room was at the back of a classroom and after school this room became the club house for a bunch of the computer-interested folks - read geeks - including myself.
PD&D: What did you learn in the back of that classroom with the rest of your posse?
Lewin: I have two distinct memories of those early days. The first was taking home a book on the BASIC language, and reading it cover to cover in a single day - and night. Up to that point I had been banging my head against the wall trying to make sense of technical scraps I was picking in the club house.
To have the complete computer language, with its unassailable logic and structure, laid out in front of me, was akin to the parting of the Red Sea. All that information just seemed to get absorbed in my brain like a sponge - every aspect of the language just seemed to find its home as the answer to this or that problem I had been thinking about. For me, this was a light bulb moment that profoundly influenced me.
Another distinct memory of that period occurred early in my tenure as a computer-ite.
The PDP/11's BASIC language logon prompt asked users to "Please Say Hello," to which “Hello” could be typed to successfully log on, or as it turned out, anything starting with an 'H'.
Somehow I found the program that ran this log on code, and decided it would be a brilliant idea to change "Please Say Hello" to "Please Say Goodbye." Unfortunately, as I had no idea what I was doing at that point, I failed to copy over the second part of that code, which entered the typed-in information from the user, and checked whether it started with an “H”.
So once I put the modified program into action, users could type in Goodbye, G, Hello, or H, and still not be able to log on successfully. Luckily the system administrator was the forgiving sort, and all I earned for this stunt was a couple-days of computer access suspension, which, I should mention at the time, seemed quite painful.
PD&D: What experience/s from Rensselaer Polytechnic (RPI) or Brandeis cemented your interest in motion control?
Lewin: At the risk of over simplifying, my experiences at RPI probably had a more cementing effect on my interest in beer, than my interest in motion control.
Having said this, there were some great projects going on which I did get involved with, including an attempt on the part of some students to build a space-based telescope, called ISRG (Independent Space Research Group).
Although this never got off the ground -so to speak - it probably contributed to my interest in starting organizations, and encouraged me to believe that with effort and focus, anything was possible.
PD&D: After working for a business that is now defunct (Alyx Medical), how did you remain optimistic in founding PMD?
Lewin: Other than Alyx Medical, I tended to work for small companies that became successful, larger companies. For example I was the first engineer hired at the company that is now called RSA Security, working on their little key-fob passcode generator. This product sells by the millions today.
Another company I worked for, Brooks Automation, hired me as their first software engineer to develop next generation vacuum-based automation. At one point they had nearly 2,000 employees. So my general experiences with start-ups has been positive, although it certainly is painful to be with a company that goes out of business while you are working there.
PD&D: What was the breakout game that you developed for the early PC?
Lewin: Breakout is the video game where you have a pong-like paddle at the bottom, and the ball bounces around and knocks out one brick at a time above.
Our version was called Knockout and had many of those same effects. Related to this game, one of the fun things we use to do was seal up the bottom so that no paddle movement was necessary to keep the ball bouncing. We would then speed up the motion.
Because our program was written in assembly language, it could run very fast, and was throttled back so humans could keep pace. At full speed, with the bottom sealed, the effect of the ball chipping away at the bricks was more like a hive of killer bees attacking. Scary, but cool.
PD&D: What is PMD’s specialty?
Lewin: PMD's specialty is providing cost-effective motion control solutions for OEMs. We got our start selling Motion Processors, which are dedicated motion ICs that provide features like profile generation and servo loop closure.
Today we have incorporated these chips into a wide range of higher level products including cards and modules. Most of our business is still in selling the chips though, because despite the advantage of buying more integrated products, working at the chip level allows the OEM to tailor a solution specifically for their application.
This can be an important advantage because it allows the developer to create a low cost machine controller that is easy to service, and has relatively few cables.
PD&D: What has been your most memorable experience since founding PMD?
Lewin: Describing my life to editors …
The single most memorable event was a dinner that I attended after a day of presentations at the Annual Symposium on Incremental Motion Control Systems and Devices. This particular annual event was located in San Jose, CA, and was run by Benjamin Kuo, a true veteran of the motion industry.
The event was attended by a number of industry luminaries at that time including Bert Leenhouts, Jacob Tal and others. After Benjamin gave a brief after-dinner speech, he then said, "OK, our first presentation of the evening will be..."
What then unfolded were a series of individual singing performance, anecdotes and jokes performed by the attendees of the dinner, the same folks who who had been giving technical presentations at the symposium just hours earlier
Apparently these personal performances were a well-known feature of this dinner, and I had the simple good luck to stumble into it and be part of it that night. This event struck me because it was so personal, and so involving - between participants that on the surface were there for purely professional reasons.
I think Professor Kuo reminded us, by organizing the event in this way, that we will make progress in our technical challenges through cooperation, sharing and honest exchange.
Seeing this other side of the motion control gurus that I worked with and admired so much, was a very memorable event, and I shall not soon forget it.
PD&D: What does the future hold for you? PMD?
Lewin: We are continually amazed by how quickly the architectural aspects of motion control are changing.
Driving this is three trends: the continual increases in computing power, the continual reduction in size of the power electronics, and the availability of high speed low cost digital networks such as Ethercat.
All of these trends are combining to allow the location of the controls to be decoupled from the motor. In the old days, encoder feedback signals degraded, analog amplifier signals degraded, driving the location of the controls close to the motor, or clustered together in a control box.
None of that applies anymore, so the location of the electronics can be driven exclusively by the consideration of serviceability and cost. For some systems, this means that the electronics should be located close to the mechanics, for others, it means they should be located on a rack. Either way, the relative size and footprint of the electronics keeps shrinking to the point where it almost vanishes within the overall machine itself.
PMD has been at the forefront of all of these trends. With its chip-oriented background it is in an ideal position to provide motion controllers that exactly suit what customers want.
PD&D: Finally, what keeps you up at night?
Lewin: Barking dogs and nearby keggers.
For more information on Performance Motion Devices, visit www.pmdcorp.com.