Baldor’s Ethernet Powerlink servo drive offers a migration route to new levels of performance for motion automation builders currently using positioning drives compatible with the Canopen DSP 402 standard.
Many replicating machinery builders use the Canopen fieldbus standard because of its low cost per node, simple wiring, and wide product support – from more than 400 vendors worldwide. The DSP 402 profile for positioning drives is often used in combination with an OEM’s custom control software and hardware – an area in which many man-years of investment has often been made.
The decision of the EPSG – the group controlling the Ethernet Powerlink real-time Ethernet standard – to work with the Canopen standards body and adopt the DSP 402 profile (and the DS-301/DS-302 application layers), gives Canopen users an interesting migration path. It offers the potential to upgrade the network to a much more sophisticated and higher bandwidth standard (100Mbits/sec rather than 1Mbits/sec maximum), with minimal disruption to the way OEMs build systems and to the control software.
“Replicating machinery builders can start to employ dual-standard DSP 402/Ethernet Powerlink drives in their equipment immediately, while they port their control system software to a new generation core and take advantage of the new Ethernet environment,” says David Greensmith. “A phased changeover like this makes it easier to upgrade, allowing machine evolution to happen in predictable and manageable steps.”
In addition to easing system migration to Ethernet, Baldor’s Microflex e100 dual-standard servo drive’s Canopen interface gives users the flexibility to upgrade a control system architecture in stages. In an Ethernet Powerlink system, Microflex e100 drives integrate an Ethernet Powerlink to Canopen gateway.
The drive has Canopen DS-401 I/O management capability, so if there is no Ethernet-compatible equivalent available for an existing system function, or if Canopen-based components remain the most cost-effective choice, users are free to partition the system accordingly. For example, there can be an Ethernet Powerlink core and drives, with sub-networks of Canopen I/O modules connected to drives.
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