What interfacing device can be used between a simulation and a hardware?

Have a look at GEFanuc for the hardware, either analog i/o or digital or a combination of both, and for a easy to use software program if you don't have one is LabView.

For the best advice we need a bit more info.

Are the motors stepper, servo or what?

do you need speed, position or direction control?

For on/off one can use a parallel printer port to interface to 64 switches. There is also a USB to parallel available. Actually USB can interface to more or less anything.

For steppers or servos I like the Galil.

Tnx fortheinfo. Stepper motors will be used. We need speed, position, and direction control. We will be using pins attached to motors. The height of each pin are 2mm each.

Hi Angelica

Steppers can be controlled in different ways

Steppers are mostly driven by a dedicated driver (which can even be part of the stepper. what is then required is a step and a direction pulse. This 2 lines can be provided for by a parallel printer card (5 axes max per interface 4 on the 8 bit bus and 1 on the control lines) or a dedicated io board.

Driving 3 - 5 steppers however require a lot of processing and one need to strip a lot of programs from XP to achieve it.

A better way of achieving individual movement would be to use a stepper controller card or driver. As I said I like the Galil. They have up to 8 axis controller boards and more than 1 card can be chained together, speed,distance acceleration - de acceleration can be programmed on individual axes. Some of the steppers can be linked to a main stepper as cam driven.

Driving 50 steppers with individual motion profiles would be hard but a real challenge.

Can you reveal some more info about the simulation?