Servo drives, single axis motion

[Automation_Tech]

Hello All:

I have a slitter/cutter machine that’s just a feed, stop, cut, feed, stop, cut, easy enough.

It works good but, the electronics are old and are in dire need of replacement, its controlled by a micro computer that’s proprietary (locked) and a Movidyn SEW euro drive. With a special position card.

I am going to replace it, with a Compactlogix, PanelView+ and servo drive, the drive is a AB Sercos Ultra 3000 P/N 2098-DSD-HV100-SE

Now to my question, are all servo motors the same? the motor is also a SEW Eurodrive

Name plate:
400V
225hz
4500 rpm
3~
12.0nm / S1Nm
Imax 34.80

My AB guy is suggesting replacing the motor, but I am concerned with the mechanical portion, I don’t think this AB motor will hook up to my gearbox/speed reducer so this would blow my budget if I have to replace the motor. This has a resolver for position and a brake, I will handle the brake in the program.

What do I need to be concerned with?

Many thanks

 

[OkiePC]

No, all servo motors are different!

Well, most of them anyway. Sometimes the differences are very tiny!

It may be possible to run the old motor with the new drive, but will take thorough research into the motor and its feedback device.

The AB motor may be a direct fit, but be very careful about checking the shaft size. I once got bit becaue of a 1mm difference in shaft diameter.

I believe the Ultra drive provides a provision to control the motor brake. It may or may not work in your application as intended if you need to be able to release the brake and let the motor freewheel during some part of the operation, you may need to control the brake release logic separately as you stated.

 

[TimWilborne]

One other thing is how often does it cycle. I had an application a few years ago that the cycle time was around 1.2 seconds. Because of the way it operated I had to disable and re-enable the drive on every cycle. I was concerned about the constant cycling shortening the life of the drive. I talked to an engineer for the 2098 and he said it was fine as long as it didn't have a brake. The enable is solid state but the brake is a relay

Also I hate to say it but I have always found it best to match the drive and motor. But I would push a little harder for them to verify whether the motor would work or not. I have mixed them once but the drive manufacturer had me send a motor sample to him for testing

 

[CharlesM]

Sercos for this? My guess would be that is where your budget went. But you have to spend it somewhere.

Now for what I really think. I also like to keep my motor drive the same. I have in the past mixed and matched but in the end it made a lot more work. If the motor is working good then maybe you should look into a SEW drive. It could save you some $ over the AB. I have not used any SEW stuff in years but I thought it was good quality when I did use it. Also you could look at how the current drive is being controlled. Most likely it has an analog +/-10vdc control and the work is being done in the old controller. If the controller is the problem replace it using the old drive and motor. Then when you get more $ go back and replace the drive and motor with a matched set.

 

[Gerry M]

I don't know your specifics but I added a servo motor to a similar setup a while back, and I was able to do it without the PLC. This also saved cost. The feed and cut operations were seperate and each activated by push buttons. The feed was controlled by a small HMI connected to an indexing drive. Just an idea.

 

[Automation_Tech]

Thanks for the feedback guys

One other thing is how often does it cycle.

The total cycle time is 12sec, this is with 5 feeds, 4 cuts the sizes range from 12" to 24" on the feed, with a tolerance of +/- 0.015 of a inch, this would include a trim cut, front and back

If the motor is working good then maybe you should look into a SEW drive

I was asked to use AB

Also you could look at how the current drive is being controlled

Thats the positioning card, it needs to go, one of the issues with the older stuff its no longer supported.

and I was able to do it without the PLC

I thought of that, but most of the people involved are asking for a PLC controled, so they can service it themselves, we did one with a Baldor (smartmove), but none of the tech could work on it, its getting back into the samething that were in now.



I guess I will look into modifying the speed reducer to fit the AB motor.

The brake on the system now only comes on, well after the autocycle has completed its last motion of the autocycle(aprox 3sec). I have removed the coil on one before and it work fine so I'm not sure of the reasoning for the brake, but it works fine without.

I will be doing this on 12 machines in the US, It would probably be the best keeping them all the same, from the motor back, since the majority of the motors are not the same and it would be a lot of leg work researching the compatibility

thanks again

 

[swhite65]

This is a common application that should be done with an indexing drive and a cheap, micro PLC for discrete control. What you are being quoted will cost many times more than it should. If you want to go A-B, use a Micrologix with an Ultra 3000i drive. The Baldor SmartDrive was not liked for a reason - programming complexity. Maintenance wants something easy to troubleshoot and maintain. Using Ultraware with the Ultra drive is very simple. You setup your index move and trigger it with a PLC output. It has the other features you need to do your application. Good grief, the Compactlogix will cost $2500 just for the processor. The Micrologix will be under $500. If you need the rest of the specifics I will be glad to help as I have done these applications with Kebco, Eurodrive, Fenner, and other control setups.

 

[kolyur]

This is a common application that should be done with an indexing drive and a cheap, micro PLC for discrete control. What you are being quoted will cost many times more than it should. If you want to go A-B, use a Micrologix with an Ultra 3000i drive. The Baldor SmartDrive was not liked for a reason - programming complexity. Maintenance wants something easy to troubleshoot and maintain. Using Ultraware with the Ultra drive is very simple. You setup your index move and trigger it with a PLC output. It has the other features you need to do your application. Good grief, the Compactlogix will cost $2500 just for the processor. The Micrologix will be under $500. If you need the rest of the specifics I will be glad to help as I have done these applications with Kebco, Eurodrive, Fenner, and other control setups.

I agree, a micro PLC and indexing drive is probably how I would approach this application. I've had really good experiences with the Ultra 3000i drive. Keep in mind that although they advertise 64 programmable indexes, you usually can't address that many directly because it would require 6 out of your 8 available digital inputs, and more than 2 are normally required to control other drive functions (i.e. homing, drive enable, start motion). However, depending on your application, you may be able to chain multiple indexes together or use incremental moves to overcome this limitation.
-John

 

[hounddog]

ab servo

This is a common application that should be done with an indexing drive and a cheap, micro PLC for discrete control. What you are being quoted will cost many times more than it should. If you want to go A-B, use a Micrologix with an Ultra 3000i drive. The Baldor SmartDrive was not liked for a reason - programming complexity. Maintenance wants something easy to troubleshoot and maintain. Using Ultraware with the Ultra drive is very simple. You setup your index move and trigger it with a PLC output. It has the other features you need to do your application. Good grief, the Compactlogix will cost $2500 just for the processor. The Micrologix will be under $500. If you need the rest of the specifics I will be glad to help as I have done these applications with Kebco, Eurodrive, Fenner, and other control setups.

Would you mind posting some samples
I just finished installing a baldor flex + drive on a machine that had a automation direct plc.
It was pretty straight forward, the plc gave a signal for the motor to index, which it did until it made a home prox switch, which connected directly to the servo drive.
The one thing I did not like, was the fact that the software for the baldor flex + drive had to be online and connected to a baldor servo drive before you could actually run the software. it had a option to run in simulation mode, but the only thing that would do is let you see the opening page.
Is this similar to the ab servo?
One thing I have been looking into is taking a servo motor drive, and be able to tell it from a display how far to move, and it move that distance.
Any good suggestions.
About the only experience I have had with servo drives is to program the preset moves into the parameters of the servo and then use the plc output to determine which move to execute.
Thanks

 

[hounddog]

Forgot to mention, but any ab suggestions would be appreciated.
Thats because I have a few ab micrologix 1200 plc's laying around and a few panelview micro 300 displays

 

[OkiePC]

This is a common application that should be done with an indexing drive and a cheap, micro PLC for discrete control. What you are being quoted will cost many times more than it should. If you want to go A-B, use a Micrologix with an Ultra 3000i drive. The Baldor SmartDrive was not liked for a reason - programming complexity. Maintenance wants something easy to troubleshoot and maintain. Using Ultraware with the Ultra drive is very simple. You setup your index move and trigger it with a PLC output. It has the other features you need to do your application. Good grief, the Compactlogix will cost $2500 just for the processor. The Micrologix will be under $500. If you need the rest of the specifics I will be glad to help as I have done these applications with Kebco, Eurodrive, Fenner, and other control setups.

He is right.

The only hard part about doing your application with a micro, is when you change your index distance from the MMI, it takes a fat little chunk of serial programming to get those numbers in order and sent to the drive. Once that's done though, (and there are examples all over the place) it's money in the bank after that.

The sercos set up is a waste of time unless you have high speed coordinated motion between multiple axes. You can even do that without sercos by connecting a pulse train between the drives.

The 3000i may support registration motions too, so you can set it up to find the edges of your product with a photo eye for really accurate splicing. Take a look at the indexing drive capabilities and make sure that "operation mode override" and registration functions are still included. The last time I used that feature was with an Ultra 200. Surely those features are still there in the newer series.

JMHO
Paul

 

[jstolaruk]

Take a look at the indexing drive capabilities and make sure that "operation mode override" and registration functions are still included.

They are, and that mode override has come in handy on more than one occasion.

 

[swhite65]

OkiePC: The ULTRA 3000i does have registration so what you are speaking of will work. Great suggestion.

 

[swhite65]

Hounddog:

One setup to consider is to use one of the Red Lion displays that will talk multiple protocols. I used one connected directly to an Ultra drive and it worked perfectly. You could also connect your Micrologix 1200 to the Red Lion and use it as a "pass thru" port. You have many options with this setup. You can setup variables in the Red Lion interface for the servo and the PLC. You can change the setups in the servo with the PLC, etc.. The Red Lion interfaces are also priced very well. You could do it without the PLC as the Red Lion can be programmed with user executable style code. It depends on the scope of what you need to accomplish.

 

[kolyur]

One setup to consider is to use one of the Red Lion displays that will talk multiple protocols. I used one connected directly to an Ultra drive and it worked perfectly.

I have also used the Red Lion HMIs with the Ultra3000 and can vouch for the compatibility. If you still want to use a PLC, the Micrologix units are ideal since they can handle long words, which is how the data is transferred serially from the Ultra3000.

The one thing I did not like, was the fact that the software for the baldor flex + drive had to be online and connected to a baldor servo drive before you could actually run the software. it had a option to run in simulation mode, but the only thing that would do is let you see the opening page. Is this similar to the ab servo?

I can tell you that the A-B software (Ultraware) is fully functional even when you're not connected to a drive. You can create an offline drive, set all the parameters, then copy them all over once you're hooked up. One thing I recently learned from this forum is that the Ultra3000 drive is private-labeled and a virtually identical unit is available from Giddings & Lewis.
http://www.glcontrols.com/Products/centurion_motors.htm

The software for their drives is just like Ultraware and is a free download here:
http://www.glcontrols.com/Support/Downloads/Product/DSAProV1_5.zip
I think we pay about $80 for Ultraware.

-John