Designed for a custom application in the Carpet Tufting industry, this Multi-Drive Unit (MDU) consists of 12 independent servo drives
assembled on a 9U PCB. Depending on the end-user’s requirements,
anywhere from 100 to 200 of these MDUs may be in use in a single
machine. A central CPU provides a dual CAN bus interface for the MDU, and this CPU communicates information over an SSI bus between the CAN bus and the servo drives. A CAN Communications Processor controls the process and communicates with the MDUs.
The servo drives operate in Gear Mode, following a Master Encoder value that comes from an encoder mounted on main shaft of the
machine. This value is broadcast every 1 milli-second over one of the CAN channels to all motors. The other CAN channel is used to transmit gear values independently to each servo drive, and to get status
information back from the MDUs. A debug channel on the 1msec bus enables the CAN Communications Processor to retrieve periodic data from the servo drives, to be used for data recording and trend analysis.
The motivating factor behind the development effort was the need to have easy, faster setup and programming flexibility in controlling up to 2200 axes per machine, replacing a mechanical CAM shaft.
PRODUCT FEATURES
Operation Modes