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Product category: Industrial Drives/Controls
News Release from: Control Techniques | Subject: Unidrive SP
Edited by the Engineeringtalk Editorial Team on 12 February 2008

Drives provide a smooth ride

The secure disable feature ensures when the secure disable input is disconnected, the drive will not operate the motor, even if combinations of components within the drive have failed.

The comfort offered by German lift manufacturer Osma-Aufzuge can be in part attributed to the drives and software package that Control Techniques Drive Centre in Hennef has been able to put together for the company The smoothness of the gearless range has helped Osma to offer an ultra-reliable, high-performance solution for the German market

Each lift installation is custom-designed and manufactured.

The company switched to drives from Control Techniques in 2005.

This also coincided with the launch of a new, low-cost gearless system.

Initially, Osma's interest was in the Commander SE AC drive, but the programming capabilities of the Unidrive SP opened up new possibilities in product design.

Unidrive SP has become the company's drive of choice, incorporated in over 80% of projects.

"We have worked very closely with Dr Holger Konig at Control Techniques on developing advanced lift software and have developed a very good product offer with more features than before", said Osma's Technical Manager Klaus Hebbeler.

Control Techniques Germany has been supplying Osma with Unidrive SP multimode AC drives up to 90kW, complete with special lift software and PC management software that removes complexity during set-up and commissioning.

Each drive is also fitted with a CAN-Bus module for communication with the Osma control system and, depending on the system requirements, additional modules are added for encoder, sin/cos or resolver feedback.

Over the last 18 months, more and more of the capabilities of the Unidrive SP have been used.

"For example, we wanted to use small UPS units to bring the cabin to the nearest floor, but these are easily over-loaded and can burn out" Hebbeler said.

"We asked Dr Konig to help and he wrote a special piece of software to limit demand on the UPS".

"This works very well".

The secure disable feature, built into Unidrive SP drives as standard, is helping to further reduce the overall system costs.

The secure disable function is failsafe in operation, so that when the secure disable input is disconnected, the drive will not operate the motor, even if combinations of components within the drive have failed.

It is also independent of the drive firmware and, as such, meets the requirements of EN954-1 category 3 for the prevention of motor operation.

Osma has put together a scheme, using the secure disable feature in conjunction with just one contactor, to meet the current requirements of EN81-1 for the operation of lifts.

The Unidrive SP AC variable speed drive range spans of 0.75kW to 1.9MW.

The Unidrive SP is configurable into five operating modes - open and closed loop, vector, servo and regenerating modes.

It offers connectivity to most industry standard networks and accepts 14 position feedback protocols.

Its on-board PLC can be supplemented with high-end PLC processors and customer programmable application modules are offered with a library of software solutions. Request a free brochure from Control Techniques ...

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