New Industry Products

DC Brush Drive Provides Distributed Motion Control

January 10, 2006 by Jeff Shepard

Performance Motion Devices has added the ION™ DC brush drive to its product offering. This fully enclosed, compact module is the second in PMD's new family of high performance drives providing network connectivity, power amplification and other advanced features in a rugged, easy to use package. ION is available for dc brush, brushless dc and microstepping motors, and is ideal for medical, scientific, semiconductor, industrial, robotic and general automation applications.

Based on PMD's Magellan™ Motion Processor, the ION provides high-performance, low cost distributed motion control in an asynchronous serial network (RS485) version or a CANBus network version. Multiple ION modules (up to 127) can be connected on a single network. ION provides an output capability of up to 15 amps peak, and 500 W at 56 volts. Other features include hardware performance trace, on-the-fly profile changes, and PLC style inputs and outputs.

President and CEO, Chuck Lewin says, "The move toward distributed control has been driven by cost. A motion controller with separate amplifiers is substantially more expensive than multiple single-axis intelligent modules. The reduction in wiring in that sense actually comes for free, because it is absolutely not necessarily to justify the move to a serial network."

The IONdc brush drive can be programmed using Pro-Motion,® a Windows™-based exerciser which allows quick and easy drive set up or C-Motion® and VB-Motion™ software libraries which let users to develop their own applications in C/C++ or Visual Basic.

The ION drive is CE marked and RoHS compliant. Prices start at $223 in OEM quantities.