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B&R enters the drives business
Published:  01 August, 1999

B&R enters the drives business

B&R Industrial Automation has developed a family of positioning systems based on a modular servo drive system including amplifiers, motors and gearboxes. The company claims that the Acopus system will offer high performance at a low price.

The system is designed to complement B&R`s established products which are based on special-purpose motion modules that plug into the backplane of its PLCs to control external servo or stepper motors. While this approach is suitable for simpler positioning applications, B&R says the new system will meet the demand for applications needing faster positioning for higher production rates.

The Acopus family includes compact motors rated from 0.15-32Nm with embedded chips that allow the connected amplifier to identify and configure the motor automatically.

The intelligent amplifiers can generate position trajectories internally, cutting the level of communications needed with the host system. The amplifiers are suitable for both synchronous and asynchronous motor operation. Loop update times are said to be less than 50 microseconds.

Several drives can be connected to a B&R PLC controller using the CAN bus system. A graphical programming package including a cam profile editor is available.