Fifteen and counting: a landmark birthday for the Mint motion language: Language narrowly escaped being called BIFMOC, inventor reveals

Citation

(2004), "Fifteen and counting: a landmark birthday for the Mint motion language: Language narrowly escaped being called BIFMOC, inventor reveals", Assembly Automation, Vol. 24 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/aa.2004.03324aab.004

Fifteen and counting: a landmark birthday for the Mint motion language: Language narrowly escaped being called BIFMOC, inventor reveals

Fifteen and counting: a landmark birthday for the Mint motion language: Language narrowly escaped being called BIFMOC, inventor reveals

Keywords: Motion control

The Mint motion control language celebrates its 15th anniversary. Created in 1988 by the UK start-up Optimised Control – now part of Baldor Electric Co. (Fort Smith AR, USA) – as an accessory for some novel motion hardware ideas, the language has proved to be the enduring factor in the company's international success.

Mint's English-like commands – which inventor Mark Crocker borrowed from his student experience of BASIC in the UK on computers such as the Sinclair Spectrum and BBC Home Computer – was a revelation to a motion control community used for programming with mnemonic codes. With high level commands such as PRINT and SPEED, interpreted execution for “instant” results, and other “advanced” features like user-defined variable names, motion control programming started to become accessible to just about any engineer or technician. Thousands of machinery and automation OEMs and engineers worldwide use the language at present, which in its 15th year has reached version 5 and incorporates around 100 man-years of code.

“It's the softer side of motion control – simplicity and ease of programming, configuration and set-up – that we see making a big difference to automation project efficiency, timescale and cost”, says Mark Crocker, Marketing Director of Baldor UK. “Many motion companies still focus a vast amount of effort on hardware – with the result that some software tools today really can be considered as still in the Stone Age. Hardware is important of course, but the really big gains in motion today are in areas such as ease of development and set-up, human-machine interfacing, connectivity and portability.”

Mint stands for Motion Intelligence. During its 15 year development, Mint has gone through two major evolutions. The first came in 1994. While developing the language for the release of Baldor's 32-bit real-time control platforms, Baldor reworked Mint in the form of an embedded “C” library, providing much greater flexibility for programmers. Dynamic link libraries (DLL) and later ActiveX components were developed to provide enormous flexibility for system developers. Applications could be developed in Mint, embedded “C” or PC languages such as C++ and Visual Basic – all with a common application programming interface (API).

A second leap forward came with the release of version 5 in 2001, which added multi-tasking capability and other high-level modular programming features such as functions and procedures, and compatibility with ActiveX components. It additionally took the company's long-standing developer's “Workbench” onto a completely new plane. One of the new features was a function called “SupportMe”. This automatically collects information such as the version of Windows and service pack that runs on the developer's PC, plus numerous technical details of the motion controller hardware, for e-mail to a Baldor support engineer when there is a technical issue to discuss.

Mint now boasts several hundred high level keywords to simplify the development of both motion and all the other control, networking and HMI tasks on automation.

“What gives me most pleasure is that Mint is one of just two or three recognisable software brands in the motion control market”, adds Crocker. “I see it mentioned on engineers' resumes. I don't think that would have been the case if we had stuck with the first name we thought of, which was BASIC interpreter for motion control (BIFMOC)!”

“Our industry is evolving fast, we're starting to see many more dedicated software engineers getting involved, and these individuals want to use the kind of tools they've trained with at college and university”, he adds.

For further information, contact: Mark Crocker, Baldor, Mint Motion Centre, 6 Bristol Distribution Park, Hawkley Drive, Bristol, BS32 OBF. Tel: +44 (0) 1454 850000; Fax: +44 (0) 1454 859001; E-mail: mark.crocker@baldor.co.uk