With the addition of EtherNet/IP to this servo drive offering, it now offers Common Industrial Protocol (CIP) motion technology at the drive level. This now allows machine builders to think bigger in terms of I/O points, more axis and motion control. The CIP motion technology provides application profiles that allow position, speed and torque loops to be set within a drive. Precision Clock Synchronization, mapped into the CIP object model, and multiple axis can be coordinated for precise, synchronized motion control. And EtherNet/IP with CIP Motion allows 100 axes to be coordinated with a 1ms network update to all axes.
In the news release, Rockwell suggests an Integrated Architecture environment for machine builers so they can leverage higher-end machine designs. The release goes on to say a single design platform can offer "200 to 10,000 I/O points, giving machine builders the portability to migrate existing machine designs into newer higher-end machine designs."
The company also adds that this servo drive can lower cost to deploy motion control on low-axis machines, such as index tables, process skids, case packers, erectors and packaging. Other features include safe, torque-off functionality. By disabling the drive, machine setup, cleaning, removal of jams and other maintenance tasks can be done without shutting off the machine.
Also, the CIP messaging definition will now offer machine builders the ability to acquire more data, diagnostics and reduce programming, while sharing data more easily with the enterprise networks.
