Omron (www.omron.com) is proud to announce three ranges of drives to succeed Yaskawa-produced products that the company released under a European joint venture that ended last year.

The first range is a family of machine control inverters, which offer features such as: 200 percent starting torque at 0.5Hz; position control; drive sequence programming; one-parameter auto-tuning; control of induction and permanent magnet motors; and open-loop torque control.

The MX2 inverter drives are based on WJ200 series from Hitachi. They are available in 200 V single-phase versions from 0.2 to 2.2 kW, 200 V three-phase versions from 0.2 to 15 kW, and in 400 V three-phase versions from 0.4 to 15 kW. The current vector drives can be utilized in some applications to eliminate cost in servo drives or a flux vector.

The drives support logic programming with a flowchart tool, which can be utilized to create programs of up to 1,000 lines of code. Without extra hardware, they can be adjusted to follow a master speed signal. Also, they can be utilized for simple positioning without the need of external position controller.

Modbus RS-485 support is built in, while option cards are planned fieldbus networks such as EtherCat, Profibus and DeviceNet. A 24 V DC input is standard, and can be utilized to keep the drives running in the event of mains input failures.

The second range is a family of simpler drives for applications like pump control, fan and conveyor. The compact JX drives, based on X200 series from Hitachi, are available in three-phase versions up to 7.5 kW and single-phase versions with ratings up to 2.2 kW. The drives gave integral EMC filters as standard and they provide RS-485 Modbus connections without the need for extra hardware.

The front-mounted RS-485 Modbus communication ports make it simple to connect the drives into existing networks, especially when utilized with Omron’s programmable logic controllers (“PLCs”), which incorporate Modbus-RTU Easy Master functions.

Parameter settings for two different motors can be stored into the JX drives to allow the drives to be switched between the motors as required.

The third is a range of pulse control servo drives, which occupy 50 percent of space of its predecessors. The SmartStep 2 drives, based on Minas E family from Panasonic, are available in power ratings from 100–750 W and are ideal for point-to-point motion applications where economy and simplicity need to be combined with high performance.

The servo drives are made for easy integration with other automation components like Omron’s NQ operator terminals and CP1L PLCs.

Omron’s servo drives and inverters can be programmed with its CX-Drive software, which offers monitoring and parameter editing, alarm reporting and I/O status, and real-time data tracing, plus a simple auto-tuning procedure.