About ModuSystems AI

ModuSystems AI is the Engineering Decision Engine: describe a motion task and get a sized, validated, priced 3D system built from production LYNX actuators and AXYS controllers, in minutes. It is made by the people who make the hardware — ModuSystems, Inc. of San Jose, California — and it runs the same sizing math our engineers have used for about twenty years.

The company

ModuSystems, Inc. designs and manufactures precision motion-control hardware in San Jose, California: the LYNX family of belt-driven, lead-screw and ball-screw linear actuators (NEMA 17, 23 and 34; stepper or servo; repeatability ±0.025 mm; travels to 1,275 mm; loads to 50 kg), LYNXSYS multi-axis Cartesian gantry systems, LRA linear-rotary actuators, AXYS BLC stepper and servo motion controllers programmed with the Snap2Motion visual block software, and the ZYMETRYX liquid-handling platform. The founding idea has not changed: motion control should be modular in design, flexible in problem solving, and accessible to engineers at every experience level. Customers are OEMs, integrators and labs in electronics assembly, test, life sciences and light industrial automation. For applications beyond belt and screw actuators, ModuSystems also integrates partner lines including Flexiv adaptive robots and Jenny Science linear-motor stages.

Why we built the engine

Sizing a motion system used to take days of back-and-forth: a spec by email, a spreadsheet, a drawing, a quote, a correction. Most of that time was spent on a few deterministic calculations — torque at speed, reflected inertia, load margin — and on looking parts up in a catalog. ModuSystems AI puts that work in the browser. The sizing engine is a port of the motor-sizing program our engineers have used for about two decades, reading the same stepper and servo torque curves and the same catalog ratings; the parametric builder assembles the actuators into a 3D system; the catalog prices it; and when a request is outside what the catalog can do, the engine says so in numbers and hands the design to an engineer with the math already done. Engineers get a defensible specification in minutes; we get requests that arrive already quantified.

How the engine makes decisions

Every number is computed, not estimated. The rated load must cover the payload with a 2× safety factor. Motor torque is read from catalog curves at the actual rpm — stepper pull-out curves at 24 V, servo continuous curves at 48 V — and must clear a 25% margin; the smallest motor in the family that does is selected. On belt axes the inertia mismatch must stay under 10:1, and when it does not, the engine computes the gearbox remedy including the gearbox's own inertia. The Z-axis rating caps system payload. The assumptions panel lists every input used, so the result can be checked by hand against the guides on this site.

Who is behind it

Jeff Doughty, VP Systems Architecture at ModuSystems, leads the engine's development and the engineering handoff behind it. Every escalation from the engine — a payload past the catalog, a force-feedback axis, an incubator environment — lands with him and the ModuSystems engineering team, who reply with a sized proposal within one business day.

Contact

ModuSystems, Inc. · 357 Piercy Road, San Jose, CA 95138, USA · (408) 708-5883 · info@modusystems.com · modusystems.com · LinkedIn · YouTube