25 www.drivesncontrols.com February 2024 SPS REPORT n As well as launching additions to its PC-based controls, motion software and cabinet-free automation portfolios, Beckhoff also announced several new motor developments at SPS. For example, there was a series of modular servomotors with integrated water cooling, resulting in extremely high power densities, and delivering rated powers of up to 40kW in the smallest installation space. The standstill torque of the AM8300 servomotors is three times higher than conventional convectioncooled motors. While the torque increases with water cooling, the rotor moment of inertia remains constant. Five flange codes, each with three lengths – with standstill torques from 5.1–274Nm – cover an wide range of applications. Options include backlash-free permanent magnet holding brakes, shaft seals and keyways. Beckhoff’s new ASI8100 integrated drive combines a stepper motor, an output stage and fieldbus connection in a space-saving design. As an EtherCat slave, it can be placed on a machine without a control cabinet or upstream I/O. The series covers ratings up to 250W, with drive monitoring via built-in LEDs. Simple function blocks for motion applications are built in. The series includes 42mm Nema 17 drives in two stack lengths, and four 56mm Nema 23 devices. Finally, Beckhoff’s AL8000 and AL8100 linear motors now offer a scanning head and scale tape for built-in position detection. This makes it easier to integrate the motors into machines because users no longer have to mount scanning heads. Only one cable is needed for the power supply, the feedback system and the thermal sensor, reducing wiring and simplifying commissioning via an electronic nameplate. The linear motors are available for 400V and 48V supplies. www.beckhoff.com Water-cooled servomotors triple standstill torque Chinese automation giant pushes into Europe New generation of controllers share code, allowing OEMs to scale machines The Chinese automation giant Inovance is continuing to push into the European market and at SPS demonstrated a selection of its technologies including AC drives, servodrives and motors, motion controls, CNC controllers, PLCs and HMIs. Although still having a relatively low profile in Europe, Inovance claims to lead the Chinese servodrives market (with 3.4m drives sold in 2022) and to be just behind ABB in the Chinese LV AC drives market (with 4.4m LV and MV drives shipped in 2022). Globally, Inovance says it is the fifth-largest servodrives supplier and eighth in the LV AC drives market. The company employs around 20,000 people – up to 4,000 of them being engineers – and generated revenues worth $3.4bn in 2022, half of this coming from its industrial automation activities. Other areas in which it is active include electronics, electric vehicles and rail, and robotics. At SPS, Inovance was highlighting a range of compact EtherCat-enabled Codesys controllers with quad-core processors and PLCopen-compliant axis controls. There are two models: the AM320 with dual Ethernet ports, four pulse axes, four encoder inputs and support for up to 16 expansion modules; and the AM522 motion controller with 16 synchronised EtherCat axes (and support for up to 127 EtherCat slaves), and built-in linear and circular interpolation. Inovance was also showing an IP65-protected industrial touchscreen HMI (the HP800), available in 15.6- or 21.5-inch versions. LED indicators on the front panel allow users to view operating status, and the HMI includes VGA, HDMI and DP interfaces. www.inovance.eu Beckho ’s water-cooled AM8300 servomotors deliver three times the standstill torque of conventional convection-cooled motors. Inovance’s AM522 motion controller provides 16 synchronised EtherCat axes and support for up to 127 EtherCat slaves A new small controller from Lenze (the c430) offers basic motion control for compact machines and uses the same code as other members of its latest generation of controllers (the c520 and c550), allowing machine-builders to switch between them without sacrificing any code. This makes it possible to automate their machines in a much more targeted and efficient way and to scale up (or down) performance if necessary. Prefabricated software modules can reduce time-to-market. “Many machine-builders do not need highperformance systems in every case, or the requirements only grow over the years,” points out Lenze product manager, Andreas Werner. He sees applications for the new controllers in areas such as packaging (wrapping and strapping), paper (crosscutting) and textiles (winding, spinning). They support EtherCat, OPC UA and Profinet. Like other Lenze controllers, the c430 supports Fast UI runtime and allows designers to use the Easy UI engineering tool to develop machine visualisations using Web-based techniques. Lenze has expanded its portfolio with new Web panels that can be used in the field as well as in control cabinets. The new controllers form the basis for an open automation system, from the field level to the cloud. Ready-to-use software modules from Lenze’s Fast application framework can be used, as well as templates and applications that enable customisation while reducing development times. With applications at the edge, additional functions can be added to machines, enabling condition monitoring and process optimisation, for example. www.lenze.com Lenze’s latest generation of controls use the same code as each other, making migration easy
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