Electronic cams achieve highly dynamic machine motion

Published: 18 January 2008  12:00 AM
Industry Channel: None
Source: The Engineer Online
Company: Lenze Ltd

Electronic cams with servo controllers driving motors through belt drives or rack and pinions are a modern alternative to mechanical cams with many advantages.  Lenze now offer a cam motion package for their 9400 servo drives that gives dynamic, precise and jerk-free motion.  This has been developed from many years of experience with earlier series of drives.  However, with an increase in resolution from 16 to 24 bits in the 9400 drives, significantly higher dynamic performance and accuracy has been achieved.

Motion profiles are developed using the Cam Designer software tool, which is fully integrated within the Lenze “L-force Engineer” parameterisation and operating software.  This brings clear advantages, including efficient and fast operation with a single engineering software package which, in turn, reduces commissioning costs.

The advantage of motion control applications implemented in software is that sequences are easier to develop and optimise.  The new cam facility supports limited, unlimited and modulo traversing ranges.  Users can position drives on cams, carry out tool-to-material position trimming, or replace cams during an application cycle.  In this way, drives can also be synchronised with external events.

With a keen eye on usability, Lenze has provided a comprehensive library of function blocks in L-force Engineer.  This library can, for example, be used to create electronic couplings or cam groups, to perform mark synchronisation, or to compensate for downtime.  The graphic user interface also simplifies signal flow planning.

The “Cam Designer” in L-force Engineer is so powerful that an overview of the respective interactions with other axes can be quickly produced on the network drives common in cam technology applications.  As a rule, conventional programming tools only provide a view of the individual drive.  Another key advantage is that the entire project is available in Engineer as a single file which contains all data and settings.  This is in turn integrated in the pluggable memory module of the 9400 servo drives which is also safe against mains failure.

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