Inmoco has extended its range of ION® intelligent Digital Drives, from Performance Motion Devices, Inc. (PMD), with the ION/CME, a programmable version of the standard ION model, that gives designers the capability to download and run motion programs directly on the ION drive itself. This feature off-loads the host, enables standalone operation and increases the flexibility to distribute motion programs throughout a machine.
With the ION/CME, designers need not depend upon a dedicated host PC or host controller. Instead, by allowing embedded storage and execution of motion control code via a dedicated module called the C-Motion® Engine (CME), designers may decrease response times and improve the efficiencies of their designs. In addition, programs can now be downloaded to the ION/CME drive over UDP and TCP Ethernet protocols, as well as serial and CANbus communications options.
Designed for standalone operation, and also as a node delivering greater design flexibility in distributed motion architectures, the ION/CME is compact drive that provides power amplification, advanced motion control features and network connectivity in a robust, easy to use enclosed package. The drive delivers up to 20A continuous, and up to 30A peak current, and is available for DC brush, brushless DC and micro-stepping motors. Its many capabilities mean that it is ideal for medical, scientific, semiconductor, industrial, robotic and general automation applications.
Key to the performance of the new ION/CME Digital Drives is PMD’s advanced Magellan™ Motion Control IC, complete with its enhanced instruction set. This combination provides 32-bit processing power to initialise and control the motion control application, monitor performance and synchronise overall drive behaviour.
Employing the capabilities of the high performance Magellan™ Motion Processor to the full, the ION/CME Digital Drive uses a powerful instruction set to control the motion application, monitor performance and synchronise overall drive behaviour. User- selectable profiling modes include S-curve, trapezoidal, velocity contouring and electronic gearing. Servo loop compensation utilises PID control, velocity and acceleration feed-forward, and dual bi-quad filters. Additional features include limit switches, breakpoints, secondary encoder input for master-slave and electronic gearing applications. Moreover, in addition to the I/O of the original ION 500, the ION/CME has 4 digital bidirectional I/O, 2 more digital outputs, and 4 more digital inputs. It also boasts a feature not available on the first ION: a provision for a +/- 10 V analogue input, with16- bit resolution.
Supporting the easy set -up and commissioning of the ION/CME drives is PMD’s Pro-Motion® and C-Motion® software. Pro-Motion®is a Microsoft Windows®-based prototyping tool, to rapidly set up, tune, and test motion control systems that use the Magellan® Motion Control Processor. Pro-Motion optimises motion system applications by facilitating the setting and viewing of all parameters and the exercising of all features of a motion design. It includes a step-by-step axis wizard that allows designers to quickly and easily tune control loops.
C-Motion® development software is the motion control programming library for Magellan that provides a convenient set of call-able C/C++ programming routines which contain all the code required to communicate with and control the ION/CME within an application. C-Motion enables application specific C/C++ coding to be easily combined with C-Motion source code libraries. All set-up and development software is included free with ION drives.
