National Instruments and Bosch Rexroth have introduced a perfectly matched control and drive solution at this year’s NIWeek conference. The advantages of the control hardware CompactRIO and the programming environment LabVIEW are combined with dynamic servo technology. Rexroth’s pre-configured drive systems for measuring and testing machines cover a wide range of services and shorten the initial commissioning to just three minutes by means of a software wizard. Using a jointly tested and already proven interface, machinery manufacturers are programming motion sequences in the graphic environment LabVIEW without a single line of PLC code.
LabVIEW is the worldwide leader for programming environments for measuring and testing machines with more than 200,000 applications. National Instruments frequently uses the control hardware CompactRIO in these applications. Therefore Rexroth has preconfigured drive systems with the compact drive control devices IndraDrive Cs and the servo motors IndraDyn S. The IndraDrive Cs kits cover the torque range from 0.56 Nm to 19.8 Nm in finely scalable increments. In addition, Rexroth supports custom drive solutions for torques up to 631 Nm.
Using the interface CAN over EtherCat—jointly aligned by National Instruments and Rexroth—the CompactRIO control directly accesses the servo drives as master. Manufacturers can program process and motion control via the graphical programming environment LabVIEW exclusively, thereby making any additional PLC programming redundant. The plugin SoftMotion Drive Interface (SDI) required for IndraDrive Cs can be downloaded and installed directly from the LabVIEW development environment.
The start-up assistant EasyWizard shortens the initial start-up of the drive systems to just three minutes. The intelligent drive control device automatically recognizes the respective values via the electronic nameplate of the Rexroth motors. For the initial start-up of IndraDrive Cs drives the user only needs to enter a small number of application-specific values. Graphical programming of movements can then start right away in LabVIEW.
The IndraDyn S synchronous servo motors can meet the requirements of protection class IP54 or IP65. Depending on the precision required, the motors are equipped with encoder systems for standard or precision requirements.
CompactRIO is particularly suitable for point-to-point movements in applications with a small number of axes. Bosch Rexroth simplifies the implementation of complex multi-axis applications in measuring and testing machines in LabVIEW using the Motion-Logic-System IndraMotion MLC. Programming of movements can also take place exclusively via LabVIEW–without a single line of PLC code. It’s easy and fast, too: for IndraMotion MLC, more than 550 virtual tools and modules are already available for movement control in LabVIEW.
Bosch Rexroth
www.boschrexroth-us.com
Filed Under: Factory automation, AUTOMATION, Drives (servo) + amplifiers, Motors • servo, PLCs + PACs
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