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Servos in drive for publicity

A Lenze product story
Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Feb 5, 2002

Servo drives are making a moving impact in the world of poster advertising.

The world of advertising is a fickle one - constantly changing.

To keep this world moving, Prismaflex, a French billboard manufacturer, needed a truly independent motor system.

The company contacted Lenze who, in turn, supplied its knowhow in decentralised drives.

A poster campaign is one of the oldest and most effective ways of getting a message across to the general public and still remains a vital component of the modern-day marketing mix.

Traditional static posters, on which today's marketers rely, have been joined by revolving displays that house multiple campaign graphics and reveal them on a timed basis.

Lyons based Prismaflex specialises in modern outdoor advertising, producing in particular flexible roller screens that are used by companies across Europe to display high-quality graphics.

While the company also manufactures large-scale display billboards, it is the excellent picture quality produced by using Prismaflex screens that attracts the company's customers Yet, behind the glossy exterior of the colourful advertising artwork lies Lenze drive technology.

Each Prismaflex screen employs two rollers to move artwork into position.

These rollers are controlled by Lenze's helical bevel geared servo motors, each with its own drive.

The first drive, attached to the lower roller acts as the master using the Lenze 9300 Servo PLC, a servo drive which is freely programmable according to IEC61131-3 languages.

The upper motor, which controls the top roller, uses a Lenze 8200 vector frequency inverter and acts as a 'slave' unit.

The bottom roller draws the poster sequence down from the top roll on a predetermined timing sequence.

The inverter for the upper drive has the job of producing counter torque against this movement so that poster roll is held tight.

The Servo PLC - or master - controls the timing plan, feed ramps and speeds, and evaluates the end limit switch signals.

Geoff Spear, Marketing Manager at Lenze, says that Prismaflex's display screens represent an excellent example of the advantages of combining a PLC with the drive.

"The application of the Lenze Servo PLC in the Prismaflex poster displays means the system is able to operate independently without any external controls.

The use of a decentralised drive system means Prismaflex can be confident that their systems will operate around the clock".

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