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Motion control in a smaller form factor

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Jun 19, 2000

Delta Tau has unveiled a new system to enable compact control panels to be constructed while retaining the performance associated with the proven PMAC technology.

Delta Tau's PMAC motion controllers have become regarded as the de facto global standard by which industry judges such systems.

Now, the company has unveiled a new system, called UMAC (Universal Motion and Automation Controller), that employs a smaller form factor to enable compact control panels to be constructed while retaining the performance associated with the proven PMAC technology.

Essentially, the UMAC system consists of two main developments - the UMAC Macro and the UMAC Turbo.

The UMAC Macro is a solution that for machine controls provides extremely fast communications between remote amplifiers and I/O devices using Delta Tau's Macro Ring fibre optic bus or the RJ45 bus.

The UMAC Turbo is also a 3U-packaged implementation of PMAC aimed at centralised control solutions rather than the distributed concept of UMAC Macro.

The modular nature of the new UMAC system enables an incredible variety of configurations to be made to suit any specific application.

All systems start with the selection of a CPU that itself consists of the motion controller with a serial interface and an optional bus interface.

There are a number of CPU options available with choice dictated by memory requirements or number of machine axes to be controlled.

The bus interface option is PC/104 bus compatible that enables the deployment of Pentium PC power within the 3U rack assembly.

Piggyback CPU boards are supplied by Delta Tau to give a variety of memory options and there is also an additional high accuracy clock crystal option.

Further options allow for specific serial port configurations, firmware revisions, battery backed parameter memory and realtime clock/calendar functions.

For building into a packaged control cabinet, Delta Tau offers UMAC with backplane connectivity using Delta Tau's UBUS.

This means it is possible to construct an entire PC compatible computer within the compact UMAC frame.

With this in mind, Delta Tau offers a selection of power supplies (both AC and 24V DC input).

Currently, three frame capacities are offered, with 10 slots, 15 slots and 21 slots.

The smallest frame measures just 218.5mm w x 222mm d x 132mm .

Within the UMAC System there is a broad variety of control board options including: 2-axis control, 4-axis control, 144 I/O, a huge variety of isolated I/O boards, analogue and digital interface boards, encoder option boards including for stepping motors and so on.

There is also a general purpose I/O and Macro interface backplane board that enables the use of multiplexing, displays, handwheels or alternatively, it can also provide a 16 or 32 node Macro Ring interface enabling the implementation of nested control rings.

The Macro Ring is Delta Tau's proprietary optical fibre based bus solution for amazingly fast machine control thanks to the system's inherently high bandwidth.

It is feasible to communicate visual, audio, position data and I/O data along a single Macro fibre without loss of speed or quality over long distances.

With Macro Ring coupled with the new compact UMAC system, Delta Tau has created a machine or process control solution that can meet applications as diverse as a simple two axis controller to a sophisticated system handling huge numbers of axes simultaneously.

To date, the largest machine control system constructed using Delta Tau's Macro Ring handles 300 axes!.