Motion Performance Trace by Chuck Lewin, President & CEO of Performance Motion Devices, offers an introduction on the difficult task machine designers face. The article then goes into machine performance data trace (what characteristics of the trace system are important, what variable to capture, number of simultaneous trace variables, trace length, when to start the trace, when to stop the trace, how to caputre, and autonomous capture), using the trace (the data trace allows you to look at servo and profile parameters to determine how the system is functioning), simultaneous capture (most state-of-the-art motion trace facilities allow you to capture more than one variable at a time simultaneously), and a summary on how important the data trace is.