Motors and Drives
4 To compete with machine builders from regions where costs are inherently lower, designers in Europe are seeking ways to reduce both engineering time and component count. Jon Severn looks at recent product launches that will help design engineers to achieve these goals.
4 Afin de concurrencer les fabricants de machines des régions où les coûts sont par leur nature plus bas, les concepteurs en Europe cherchent des solutions pour réduire le temps consacré à l’entretien et au décompte du nombre de composants. Jon Severn observe les récents lancements de produits qui aideront les ingénieurs concepteurs à atteindre leurs objectifs.
4 Um mit den
Maschinenherstellern aus Gebieten, in denen die Kosten inhärent niedriger sind, konkurrieren zu können, suchen Konstrukteure in Europa nach Möglichkeiten, um sowohl Bearbeitungszeit als auch Komponentenzahl zu reduzieren. Jon Severn betrachtet kürzlich auf den Markt gebrachte Produkte, die den Konstrukteuren dabei helfen, diese Ziele zu erreichen.
New control technologies reduce engineering time and component count
F
aced with competition from low-cost economies, European machine builders need to find ways to maintain their market share. One strategy is to use automation products that require less
engineering time and reduce the component count, thereby saving valuable resources. Examples of this include motors with integral drive electronics, and linear actuators that combine the structural elements, bearings and power transmission components (typically a ball screw or belt drive) within a single unit. Similarly, design engineers can today specify inverter drives that deliver performance that competes with more costly and complex servo drives, stepper motors that offer near-servo performance (see panel page 58), and drives and motion controllers that can undertake tasks that would normally require a separate programmable logic controller (PLC). One European company that is actively
developing automation products with greater functionality is Lenze. For example, at the end of 2010 the company extended its L-force 8400 range of frequency inverters with the addition of a Topline version for servo applications. The 8400 range is already proven to give performance up
to low-end servo levels - for example, up to 180 cycles per minute with a standard asynchronous motor - but now the Topline versions operate with synchronous motors to deliver performance advantages thanks to the lower inertia of these motors. Being based on high-volume inverters, Topline units are said to be less expensive than even low-specification servo drives (Fig. 1). Lenze’s 8400 Topline units were unveiled at the SPS/IPC/Drives exhibition in November 2010, designed for repetitive positioning tasks such as pick-and-place, and storage and retrieval units; 200 per cent overload is available for three seconds and, depending on the application, up to 300 cycles per minute can be achieved with 0.01 mm accuracy. In line with the lower-specification Stateline and Highline versions on which it is closely based, the Topline series is available from 0.25 kW up to a newly extended maximum of 45 kW. In complex and multi-axis machinery, Topline
is said to be easy to integrate. One software application, Lenze L-force Engineer (which is free of charge for the basic version), can be used to set the operating parameters for all 8400 inverters, Lenze controllers, I/O (input/output) modules and HMI (human-machine interface) devices.
Fig. 1. Lenze L-force 8400 Topline inverter-based units offer performance that is comparable with servo drives but at considerably less expense.
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