Ethernet motion control - progress without pain!

An innovative solution for Ethernet-controlled motion supports advances in the efficiency and ease of control system building, without forcing OEMs to re-engineer their automation architectures

At SPS, Baldor is demonstrating an innovative solution for Ethernet-controlled motion that supports advances in the efficiency and ease of control system building, without forcing OEMs to completely re-engineer their automation architectures.

Based on the real-time and deterministic Ethernet Powerlink protocol, the Baldor Ethernet-compatible motion controller and servo motor drives also connect with cost-effective CANopen devices such as I/O and HMIs, and with conventional analogue motion axes.

The new product range will start production in early 2005.

"Ethernet Powerlink delivers a host of integration and system building benefits for motion and machine control, but we anticipate that in the initial stages of this market there will be aspects of systems that designers will still wish to control using conventional technology, or their own purpose-designed hardware," says David Greensmith of Baldor.

"We are implementing Ethernet Powerlink in such a way that users can implement hybrid systems with a mix of digital and analogue drives if they wish, and continue to exploit low-cost technologies such as CANopen for cost-sensitive parts of the machine control system.

This gives OEMs a large degree of freedom to migrate system architectures as and when the economics make sense".

"For the last few years, many machinery OEMs have largely focused on reducing hardware costs - with the result that equipment performance has often remained static", adds Greensmith.

"The genuine arrival of a real-time Ethernet standard - as shown by this multi-vendor Ethernet Powerlink demonstration - offers OEMs a major opportunity to move machine designs forward, for a hardware bill-of-materials that costs broadly the same as conventional technology.

It then delivers a range of benefits, by providing major gains in the speed of system building and commissioning, through reduced wiring costs, and in operational efficiency and machine performance".

Baldor is demonstrating Ethernet Powerlink compatible components including servo drives and motion controllers.

A new single-axis servo drive is purpose-designed for the Ethernet environment, and is based on a lean hardware core that minimises cost for the networked control environment.

It provides a dual-port Ethernet interface to support easy daisy chaining of drives.

There is also a CANopen interface to provide a low-cost means of adding remote I/O or other components into the machine control system; this is supported by the decision of the Ethernet Powerlink group to use CANopen device profiles.

To complement the servo drive, Baldor is showing motion controllers with a high-performance core that will control large numbers of Ethernet Powerlink connected drives, as well as traditional analogue-controlled axes and stepper drives for maximum system design flexibility.

The new system concept is accompanied by a project software tool that allows designers to create and manage machine control schemes, referencing all associated system design documents, specifications, reports, application programs, etc This tool provides network views of the system, allows users to group sets of components into application-structured views, and provides the programming environment and commissioning tools for all connected devices.

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