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CT offers servo chips for PC controls

01 March, 2001

CT offers servo chips for PC controls

Control Techniques is offering its SLM servo technology to manufacturers of multi-axis PC-based controllers. Among the first companies to take up this offer is US-based Delta Tau which has adopted the technology for its PMAC (programmable multi-axis controller) range.

"We see SLM as the bridge to an emerging market," explains Chiew Fong, vice president of Control Techniques` servo business. "Everywhere in industry there is an inexorable move away from PLCs towards PC-based control systems. We want to open up SLM technology to manufacturers of these types of products."

Fong points out that an SLM chip embedded in a host motion controller will be able to communicate digitally with servo drives and servo motors, via a four-wire system carrying data at 2.5Mb/s over lengths of up to 50m. He predicts that the technology will make "considerable" difference to the products which incorporate it.

One particular attraction of the SLM technology is that it is designed to overcome the loss in performance normally experienced as speeds increase on systems where several servo axes need to be synchronised. Its performance is said to be independent of the number of axes.

Andy Joslin, managing director of Delta Tau UK, points out that by using the SLM chips in its PMAC controllers, reduces the number of wires associated with incremental encoders from typically 14 to just four. "This is the figure for a single axis," he adds. "The more axes that are employed, the greater is the saving in total system costs."