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Adjustable Speed Control Stresses Ease and Reliability
Drive has Ethernet and other options that enhance ease of use
By Design News Staff -- Design News, February 21, 2005
Baldor Electric Co. has developed a new adjustable speed control they call H2. Baldor provided Design News with a quick peak at some of the design highlights prior to the formal introduction, which will be made at the National Design Engineering Show and Conference in March.
According to Roger Bullock, Vice President, products at Baldor, the H2 adjustable speed drive is an extension of the AK-based company's H (for harmony) drive; but the new H2 drive does a lot more.
Among the most attractive attributes of the H2 are its ease of use and enhanced reliability. The ease of use of the H2 is built on a programmable English language keypad, full diagnostics, and extended help screens. A larger graphical display increases the functionality of the operator control. To provide even higher reliability, the number of boards in the new unit has been reduced to half of those used in the initial H-drive, resulting in a lot less hardware to handle and put together.
Engineers can implement high performance applications more easily by selecting encoderless-vector, vector, or ac servo motor control operation. In addition, field expansion of the inputs and outputs is possible using up to two of the available expansion board slots.
Forward Thinking
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| Easy Does It: The new keypad on the H2 inverter drive offers more keys and faster navigation with directional arrows and enhanced soft programming keys. |
Since network connectivity is increasingly important for drives, the H2 was designed to interface with three Ethernet protocols: (1) Ethernet/TCPIP, which can be polled to get status information, but it will not perform active control; (2) Ethernet/IP (industrial protocol), an extension of Allen-Bradley's DeviceNet on Ethernet; and (3) Ethernet Powerlink for real-time control. This provides attractive options for users who rely on one approach but may want to transition to another or use more than the interface in the near future.
In addition, Baldor combined Ethernet Powerlink with a design from their motion control group to provide a mid-motion engine—a card that can be plugged into the drive. As a result, it can do full motion control either as a stand-alone unit or as a node in a multiaxis system. ActiveX control is built in for OEM front-end support so custom screens can easily be designed.
The initial introduction will include motor controls rated from 1 to 50 hp constant torque, 1 to 60 hp variable torque, with three different sizes: size A, B, and C. Baldor plans on making H2s from 1 through 450 hp, and will custom design units through 1,500 hp.
Baldor Electric Co. http://rbi.ims.ca/4387-576
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