Functional safety standards EN/IEC 62061 and EN/ISO 13849-1 ensure safety via electronic solutions, unlike traditional safety systems, which used electromechanical components to achieve safety. And while functional safety applies to a machine and its control system (not to individual components), the drive lies at the heart of the safety implementation. In fact, functional safety specifies that […]
Servo Drives
What are functional safety standards for servo drives?
Safety is a serious concern for machine builders, system integrators, and end users. Not only do they have a responsibility to provide a safe production environment, they must also meet regulatory requirements for machine safety. And of course, all of this should occur with minimal impact on operational efficiency and productivity. Fortunately, functional safety features […]
What’s the difference between single-axis and multi-axis (rack or cabinet) controls?
By Craig Dahlquist • Application Engineer at Lenze Americas || As with most applications, the requirements of the application can determine what type of drive architecture is selected. The single-axis control means that the DC power supply is internal to each drive. The multi-axis control utilizes a central DC power supply that a number of axes share through the […]
How to use servo drives with asynchronous (induction) motors?
With high construction costs of rare earth permanent magnet synchronous servo motors, asynchronous (induction) motors are more acceptable, when possible. By Craig Dahlquist • Application Engineer at Lenze Americas One way to get servo control of an asynchronous motor (on 400 to 480 Vac supply voltage) is to use a conventional 230/400 or 230/460 Vac (delta/wye connection) […]
FAQ: What are PID gains and feed-forward gains?
Gain is the ratio of output to input—a measure of the amplification of the input signal. A common example is the volume button on a stereo. This button controls the ratio of the input signal (received from the radio station) to the output signal (how loud the sound is from your speakers). When the volume is […]
What is distributed architecture for servo drives?
Article updated August 2019 || Traditional servo-system architecture consists of a power supply, a motion controller, and servo drives all housed in one location that is typically a control cabinet located away from the machine. Then each motor connects to the control cabinet by two cables … one for power and one for feedback. This […]
What is a servo drive?
Updated August 2019 || Servo systems consist of four main components — a motor, a drive, a controller, and a feedback device … with the latter usually an encoder. The controller determines what the motor must do and then triggers the drive to send the necessary electrical energy to the motor to make the required […]
Realtime control SoCs let designers focus on industrial-drive differentiation
By Brian Fortman | DesignDRIVE Marketing Manager, C2000 Microcontrollers | Texas Instruments Many industrial inverter and servodrive manufacturers rely on field-programmable gate-array (FPGA) or ASIC technology to complete functions unsupported by commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) products such as 32-bit microcontrollers (MCUs). There are drawbacks to these technologies, though. Case in point: Adding FPGAs and ASICs to […]
FAQ: What is electronic gearing for servo motors?
Gears are often used to establish a fixed speed relationship between a motor and a drive system (such as a ball screw, rack and pinion, or belt and pulley system). For example, when a belt and pulley system is connected to a motor through a 3:1 gearbox, each full rotation of the motor causes the […]
What is PIV servo control?
What is PIV servo control? It typically involves two components: feedforward control, which adds auxiliary velocity and (in some cases) acceleration signals to the servo loop in order to improve command tracking, and either PID or PIV control, which works to maximize the system’s disturbance rejection. The distinction between PID and PIV control is that […]
