TimothyMoulder
Member
We took the plunge and bought a new AD SureServo system. We got an SVA 2100 with the SVM 210 motor, medium inertia system with all the cables and software, yadda yadda. Cost was a bit over a grand, pretty good for such a strong motor.
Went through the quick-start for internal positioning control, used the self-teaching tuning routine and turned up the stiffness. The keypad on the front is really nice, you can enter any parameter from it, good for setup.
Once I had it jogging, I hooked up the RS485 to a Unitronics Vision 280 with the external RS232-RS485 converter module. I programmed the Uni to request the drive position continuously via modbus at the fastest rate, then set up to write target positions (entered from the touch screen) at a keypress. This worked like a charm, and in principle, will work with any parameter in the drive.
Next, I used a beckhoff RS485 coupler box with a unitronics RS485 add-on card (in place of the ethernet module) to create an IO drop, 4-in, 4-out. I configured the IO for the drive and the beckhoff for the basic indexing stuff, - servo enable/ready, fault reset/drive alarm, home trigger/homing done, index trigger/in position.
With this setup, I could read position, write target, enable, home and reset the drive, and trigger movement, entirely over RS485, one channel for parameters, one for IO.
Before anybody says it - yes, the e-stops are hardwired, cut power to the drive, and the overtravels and home switch go directly to the servo, not through the IO block
Now, I could have done this through one channel of RS-485, but what I envision for my next machine is 6 servos being paramterized over one channel, a second channel totally dedicated to remote IO, including the servos. Putting them on one could slow the IO reads with multiple calls, but segregating them to different ports creates no slowdown in processing IO. The Vision 280 can talk modbus out every com port at the same speed - gotta love it.
Anyhow, my impressions of the drive is - good little unit, not hard to set up. The encoder resolution is 10000 ppr, and is read and written as revolutions/pulses, so a position of 35000 counts must be transmitted as two registers, one set to "3", the other to "5000". This seems asinine, but I realized later it was really very ingenious - this drive is compatible even if the PLC can only do integer math. Hell, I could run this thing off an M91!
And that is the greatest feature I've found so far - modbus. The wiring and setup was simple, and the power is tremendous. I plan to use it's modbus ability to create an automatic parameterization setup - if a drive is changed, the Uni scans for the new node number (default 1) and scans to see which expected node is missing. When it determines the absentee, it writes a full set of parameters into the new drive - no computer, no maintenance pain, fully automatic. I can store the paramters in the built-in Database and even edit and load from there.
I've not put this new drive to real work yet, so there may be more caveats to follow. But first impression is - powerful, easy to use and great features. Another winner from AD.
TM
Went through the quick-start for internal positioning control, used the self-teaching tuning routine and turned up the stiffness. The keypad on the front is really nice, you can enter any parameter from it, good for setup.
Once I had it jogging, I hooked up the RS485 to a Unitronics Vision 280 with the external RS232-RS485 converter module. I programmed the Uni to request the drive position continuously via modbus at the fastest rate, then set up to write target positions (entered from the touch screen) at a keypress. This worked like a charm, and in principle, will work with any parameter in the drive.
Next, I used a beckhoff RS485 coupler box with a unitronics RS485 add-on card (in place of the ethernet module) to create an IO drop, 4-in, 4-out. I configured the IO for the drive and the beckhoff for the basic indexing stuff, - servo enable/ready, fault reset/drive alarm, home trigger/homing done, index trigger/in position.
With this setup, I could read position, write target, enable, home and reset the drive, and trigger movement, entirely over RS485, one channel for parameters, one for IO.
Before anybody says it - yes, the e-stops are hardwired, cut power to the drive, and the overtravels and home switch go directly to the servo, not through the IO block
Now, I could have done this through one channel of RS-485, but what I envision for my next machine is 6 servos being paramterized over one channel, a second channel totally dedicated to remote IO, including the servos. Putting them on one could slow the IO reads with multiple calls, but segregating them to different ports creates no slowdown in processing IO. The Vision 280 can talk modbus out every com port at the same speed - gotta love it.
Anyhow, my impressions of the drive is - good little unit, not hard to set up. The encoder resolution is 10000 ppr, and is read and written as revolutions/pulses, so a position of 35000 counts must be transmitted as two registers, one set to "3", the other to "5000". This seems asinine, but I realized later it was really very ingenious - this drive is compatible even if the PLC can only do integer math. Hell, I could run this thing off an M91!
And that is the greatest feature I've found so far - modbus. The wiring and setup was simple, and the power is tremendous. I plan to use it's modbus ability to create an automatic parameterization setup - if a drive is changed, the Uni scans for the new node number (default 1) and scans to see which expected node is missing. When it determines the absentee, it writes a full set of parameters into the new drive - no computer, no maintenance pain, fully automatic. I can store the paramters in the built-in Database and even edit and load from there.
I've not put this new drive to real work yet, so there may be more caveats to follow. But first impression is - powerful, easy to use and great features. Another winner from AD.
TM
