Click on the advert above to visit the company web site

Product category: Stepper and Servo Drives, Motors, Controls
News Release from: EURMotion | Subject: SmartMotor
Edited by the Engineeringtalk Editorial Team on 27 November 2006

Smart technology brings fully integrated
motion

The goal driving smart technologies is to design them smart, design them small, and design them to do much more than they do today.

The goal driving smart technologies is to design them smart, design them small, and design them to do much more than they do today Remember when you could fix your own machines?

Take for instance your car, you moved a few wires and you were back on the road or when you overloaded a circuit, you could drop-in-and-replace a fuse.

Today's machine is more likely to contain a maze of countless enclosures, cables and connections, dispelling any individual's notion of self-serviceability and maintenance.

In fact, add the cost of professional field service and reliability over the lifespan of the machine and suddenly the front-end equipment cost is a fraction of the overall cost.

Integrated motion systems, or smart technology, may be the solution to your machine design.

But what exactly is smart technology?.

Smart technology, such as the SmartMotor, designed by Animatics Corp and represented in the UK by EURMotion, combines a servomotor with an encoder feedback device, motion controller and amplifier into one integral package.

This smart technology embodies the combined efforts of mechanical, electrical, and computer engineering disciplines.

Add I/O points, fieldbus communications such as Profibus or DeviceNet, with and a savvy design and the result is a fully integrated motion system that is: compact, highly flexible, user friendly and cost effective.

The cost effective benefits of smart technologies are not immediately obvious when compared with those of a conventional system.

A conventional or centralised motion control system is a stand-alone motion controller that outputs an analogue signal to a separately enclosed amplifier that subsequently "amplifies" the power to the external motor.

This architecture can have a magnitude of external cables and cabinet enclosures.

A smart system has far fewer cables and wiring and no separate cabinet enclosures when compared with that of a conventional system.

This is due to the inherent proximity of the components.

This "integration" translates into two significant cost reductions.

The first cost reduction would be the actual cost and installation of this hardware.

The Animatics' SmartMotor for instance, has no external or internal wires.

The motion controller board, amplifier, and motor are in millimetre proximity to each other and are directly pin-cross connected.

The second cost benefit and a bit less obvious, is the reduction in electrical noise and disturbance due to the lack of cables and wires.

This translates into installation, reliability and maintenance cost reductions.

Industry studies have found the front-end hardware costs of a conventional motion control system to be around one-third the overall system deployment cost.

The remaining portion is attributed to installation, reliability and maintenance of the system.

Smart technology fulfils many of the promises of plug-and-play technology.

The Animatics SmartMotor has an internal nonvolatile memory chip, which allows for programs to be downloaded from a host, such as a computer and saved to the SmartMotor.

An entire system's tuning and performance parameters can be saved and replicated from the first to the last axes.

Further, all input, output, and internal status information is accessible through defined variables for program monitoring and control.

As for device connectivity, up to 100 axes of SmartMotors can be networked together.

This can be done through a number of field buses including RS485, Profibus and DeviceNet.

In addition to these 100 axes of network communication, these motors can communicate with just about any serially addressable device on the network, including intelligent peripherals such as light curtains, barcode readers, absolute encoders etc Sensors, monitoring an array of events can be connected and controlled directly from the SmartMotor.

EURMotion offers a free half day "Get to know the SmartMotor" session with all new sales and have a wealth of technical resources.

Flexibility in smart technology is the management of "real-time" commands and communications.

Smart technology must have the ability to poll and adjust parameters under software control while the motors are in operation.

In addition, they must allow the dynamic setting of servo loop parameters in response to certain events.

Both of these objectives are met in the Animatics SmartMotor.

All input, output and internal status information is accessible through defined variable names for programming monitor and control.

This information is available for "real-time" polling as well.

Examples of polling data can include bus voltage, internal temperature and instantaneous current.

The SmartMotor can be programmed to pre-emptively signal warnings or faults based on this collected data.

One could prompt an operator to lubricate a ball screw or clear a jam well before any damage is done.

So is that maze of enclosures, cables and connections about to disappear from the face of the motion control world? Not likely.

Ultimately, the architecture and physical layout of your machine will dictate whether a smart systems or conventional motion control is the solution.

• EURMotion: contact details and other news
• Email this article to a colleague
• Register for the free Engineeringtalk email newsletter
• Engineeringtalk Home Page

Search the Pro-Talk network of sites

Put your news on Engineeringtalk  |   Advertise  |   Get the free Engineeringtalk newsletter  |   Engineeringtalk Home
About Engineeringtalk  |   Copyright © 2000-2008 Pro-Talk Ltd, UK