More innovative and comprehensive ranges of servos

Control Techniques is known worldwide as a supplier of variable speed drives, but the company also offers one of the most innovative and comprehensive ranges of servos available

Control Techniques is known worldwide as a supplier of variable speed drives (VSDs), but the company also offers one of the most innovative and comprehensive ranges of servos available, including the new and totally unique M'Ax system with SLM technology.

In this article, CK Fong, Vice President for Servo Business, outlines the philosophy behind Control Techniques servo business and explains what this means for the customer.

Even from its earliest days in business as a VSD supplier, Control Techniques saw the growth potential of the factory automation market, driven in all sectors by the demand for higher productivity and efficiency.

The company planned accordingly, and in 1988 acquired Soprel, the leading servo supplier in Italy to gain access to the market and technology.

At about the same time it also bought Moore Reed, a specialist motor supplier, for its servomotor technology.

The introduction of this combined technology meant that as Control Techniques grew its market share of VSDs it was also able to enter the high performance sectors of the same industries, typically Cable and Wire, Rubber and Plastics, Food and Beverage, Pulp and Paper etc.

The success of this strategy can be judged from the fact that, today, Control Techniques' servo motion business represents approximately one quarter of our total world-wide turnover.

The merging in the USA of EMC (Emerson Motion Control) and Control Techniques is a strategic move to make us an even more powerful force in servos worldwide.

EMC brings to Control Techniques more products specifically for the factory automation sectors of Packaging and Automated Assembly.

These products have allowed us to further penetrate the North American market and to enhance our product offering in Europe.

This expansion of Control Techniques is critical to another of our key success factors: world-wide support.

As most servo customers are OEM machinery builders we are able to offer our customers unequaled levels of support in Europe, Americas and Asia Pacific.

Control Techniques has always entered the market on "innovation" platforms.

In the early 90's we launched our successful DigitAx servo; digital, direct on mains 400V - an innovation that led the market away from the traditional 22OV usage.

It took the market by storm.

In 1995 we introduced the revolutionary Unidrive, a unified AC drive meeting a very wide market sector, including servos.

Unidrive represents a very flexible offering - wide kW range, high open bus connectivity, choice of feedback devices (resolver, encoder, sine cosine) and of course a very powerful on-board second processor module (UD70) for single axis applications.

We recognise the trend of VSD converging on traditional servo motion sectors and Unidrive combined with our Unimotor (brushless AC servomotor) is well placed to serve this sector for the future.

The features of both the DigitAx and the Unidrive appeal to a wide range of industries, but their application is by no means exclusive.

We realise that the nature of the global servo motion control market is diverse and this means servo manufacturers have to have a wide range of products, for specific markets, if they are to compete.

As an example of this, in very competitive machinery sectors customers are looking for fast set-up, simple software and ready to run indexing applications.

In the competitive packaging machinery sector, customers are looking for fast set up, no complex software to write, no PID tuning circles and ready to run indexing applications.

The E Series and Epsilon from EMC fills this need as they have a friendly easy front-end customer interface developed over years of experience in this sector.

Highly flexible and adaptable, the Unidrive's many on-board facilities enable it to step seamlessly from VSD tasks to servo applications such as winding, packaging, printing, cut to length and many more.

We are also active at the other end of the technology spectrum where simplicity and low cost is foremost in the machinery builder's eyes, and therefore we recently launched the MiniAx and MiniMotor (* 1.5Nm) AC servo system.

Despite offering a comprehensive product for the global market range we are still innovating to ensure we stay ahead in this very dynamic business.

We are very much driven by our demanding OEM customers, who want more at today's prices.

More means higher performance, higher resolution, easier set up, multi-axis capability and so on.

Once again we've responded to these calls with innovation and 1999 saw the introduction of the M'Ax and MultiAx systems with revolutionary SLM technology: tomorrow's servo drive technology today.

M'Ax and its sister product MultiAx are the most radical and important developments in servos for years.

They both employ SLM, a technology which is really exciting because it has been developed for the high performance market, to provide machine manufacturers in all industry sectors with unparalleled levels of axis performance at low cost.

The SLM system overcomes, in a highly cost effective way, the problems traditionally experienced with conventional high-end servo technology, which is nowadays approaching its limits due to the physical constraints imposed by high resolution position acquisition.

The technology uses a combination of Control Techniques 4-wire DriveLink ASIC technology and motor-mounted SinCos encoders to deliver the highest resolution available - over 8.3 million counts per revolution and unequaled levels of performance and precision.

With this high resolution the M'Ax and MultiAx systems are able to track the smallest deviations and work with gains that do not reach the threshold of instability.

The benefits for the user are highly dynamic response with noticeably smoother performance and smaller following errors.

With their market leading levels of performance, and cost advantages, in terms of radically reduced cabling, both M'Ax and MultiAx really redefine what an OEM can expect from a servo system.

They provide a simple and effective way to achieve that extra competitive edge on any multi-axis machine.

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