Flexibility key to drive family
A
Baldor product story
Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team
Apr 17, 2003
A ground-breaking family of AC motor drives delivers a radical degree of flexibility and economy for implementing variable speed industrial applications.
Baldor has developed a ground-breaking family of AC motor drives, delivering a radical degree of flexibility and economy for implementing variable speed industrial applications.
Called VersaFlex, the AC drives offer a complete choice of motor control technologies, combined with modular hardware and advanced software options.
This ensures that optimum control can be configured for any application, whether the need is for simple regulation of motor speed using a frequency inverter, or sophisticated speed control for tasks such as positioning via dynamic closed loop vector control.
The VersaFlex family includes three separate ranges of AC drive spanning open loop, encoderless vector control, and closed loop vector control technologies - with a commonality that simplifies life for OEMs, system builders and users.
The entry-level product, VersaFlex Inverter, provides basic frequency inverter control, with an emphasis on ease of use.
Drives come with pre-programmed applications software for standard tasks such as raising/lowering speed and presets, as well as proportional-integral control for more sophisticated tasks.
A rugged human-machine interface (HMI) provides operators with an easy means of selecting the desired mode, and also displays the status of the control.
This HMI may be mounted remotely if required.
For more sophisticated variable speed applications, Baldor offers the VersaFlex Encoderless and VersaFlex Vector.
These two drive ranges provide smart open-loop vector control for encoderless motors, and true dynamic closed loop vector control respectively.
In addition to operator control using a local keypad and display, these drives may be configured for applications using a Windows tool called Workbench D.
This provides an intuitive, template-based approach to application programming, with a library of 'function blocks' that can be parameterised and interconnected in minutes using point-and-click operations.
In addition to blocks for standard requirements such as ramps, speed loops and I/O control, the library includes advanced functions such as PID process control, as well as a suite of logic, arithmetic and decision operations to support complex applications programming.
The flexibility of Workbench D allows a drive's functionality to be very closely matched to process requirements, effectively transforming the familiar variable speed AC motor control into a versatile platform for building custom process automation.
All drives come with a complement of built-in I/O, and can be configured with an EMC filter - with the smaller sizes capable of accommodating a built-in unit.
The higher-specification VersaFlex Vector drives additionally accept plug-in I/O and communications modules, including industrial networking options such as Profibus DP, DeviceNet, Modbus and RS485, and additional encoder inputs.
The potential opened up by this expansion hardware allows users to implement advanced control such as registration and phase-locked speed control of multiple-drive systems.
The VersaFlex range includes around 700 choices, spanning power ratings from 0.25 to 410kW, in single- or three-phase variants, for 50 or 60Hz operation.
All the drives come in panel mounting enclosures protected to IP20 or IP40.
The smaller units may alternatively be mounted on DIN rails.
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Contact Baldor
Tel +44 1454 850000
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A new high-end AC drive provides closed loop vector control of motor speed, combined with Windows-based configuration and hardware modularity including plug-in industrial networking. -
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