Multi-axis control

In the specialised area of multi-axis motor control, we offer the products of two expert partner companies:

DeltaTau:

• Multi-axis controller as a PC extension card with ±10V setpoint control of the axes
• Multi-axis controller as a rack-based system, freely configurable
• Can be extended to a multi-axis CNC controller

ACS:

• Specialisation on EtherCAT for decentralised architectures
• Standalone motion-controller appliances
• Motion-controller software which can be run on a PC
• Integrated motion-controller and servo-drives in a single unit
• Servo-drives with an EtherCAT interface
• I/O concentrators with an EtherCAT interface

Modern multi-axis systems require high resolution and bandwidth within each motor controller as well very fast communication between master and slaves. MACCON and our partners have two approaches to realizing network topologies for such high-performance systems:

CENTRALIZED control - a powerful multi-axis controller (1-64 axes) is responsible for the command and coordination of all axes. This controller is also performs most of the individual axis control algorithms, leaving phase current or only power switching control at inverter level. Command transmission is either via a digital, analog, MACRO or EtherCAT interface, see Delta Tau.

DECENTRALIZED control - a light host coodinates multi-axis activities but all real-time motor and machine funcitons are are performed by individual and distributed control modules, including motor control and I/O:   EtherCAT ensures real-time data communication between the host and the slaves. Here are the characteristics of such a system:

• Standard Ethernet physical layer on master, dedicated hardware on slaves
• On-the-fly frame processing done by hardware -maximum performance
• Precise synchronisation with distributed clocks (<1µs jitter)
• Flexible topology - no routing equipment needed for line topologies