Patent ID: 8462796

Claim:
A method for controlling motion of operating parts of an automatic machine by means of exchanging information among digital units in a distributed system, with said digital units being defined by at least a master node and slave nodes, said distributed system controlling said motion, said master node controlling a main axis of said automatic machine, said slave node controlling at least a respective slave axis, said method comprising the steps of: transferring information references master samples from said master node to said slave nodes, said information references master samples being sampled with sampling time corresponding to a cycle time period defined by a clock value of said master node; estimating the number of said information references sampled arrived to said slave node from said master node during a periodic reference time interval by monitoring a level of a buffer used for storing said master node samples; and using said number to recalculate the master clock value at said slave node, so that said slave nodes are able to reconstruct a master node information reference during a following reference time interval by means of generating a slave sample with a sampling time corresponding to a cycle time period defined by a clock value of said slave node, said slave sample having a value calculated from said received master samples; wherein said motion of operating parts of the automatic machine is controlled by using all and exclusively said generated slave samples.