Skip to main content

Kollmorgen Support Network

To better serve our Kollmorgen users with questions too complex to be addressed in this space, we made the painful decision to close this Community forum.

Please submit your question using the contact us form to reach our application engineering team.

For the immediate future, you can still access and read past posts.

Thank you for understanding and for participating in the community over the years.

Looking for simple way of controlling XYZ linear positioners using AKD drives | 16 Feb 2016 | |

Looking for simple way of controlling XYZ linear positioners using AKD drives

We are looking at producing a small 'flying probe' style XYZ control system. A supplier has quoted for a collection of parts to achieve this, using AKD servo drives.

I am looking for a simple way to control these drives from a low cost embedded control system. Just for context; the last time I used servo drives in any application, they had a serial port and it was pretty straightforward to control them. It seems the world had moved on and there are now a whole plethora of automation buses and means of communication. The drawback for my application appears to be the complexity of the hardware and stack I need to assemble *just* to talk to the drive! This application is neither high speed or precision. A simple I/O and external serial comms driven state machine is all that's required. We would normally develop that in microntroller firmware, but that approach does not marry well with the AKD model of control, so it seems, We would have to incorporate CAN or Modbus or some other stack - just to talk to the thing! Is that really the only way to do it?

I noted an app note on this site which suggested that you can talk to and AKD via telnet - is that the modern day equivalent of old school serial comms, I wonder.

I can't be the only person who wishes to leverage the undoubtedly high performance of the AKD drive without wanting to build up a large hardware and software stack to do so. Or am I?

Thanks in advance!

John

Comments & Answers

Joerg Muslewski | Tue, 02/16/2016 - 12:32
Hi John,
maybe AKD-PDMM is the right choice in this case. It is an AKD with an integrated motion control card.
Means you can replace one of the standard AKDs by an AKD-PDMM, thus you have both in one drive, servo- and motion control. 
For further details please refer to the link below or get in contact with your local supplier.
http://www.kollmorgen.com/en-gb/products/drives/servo/akd-pdmm/akd-pdmm-programmable-drive-multi-axis-master/  

Regards,
Joerg

John | Tue, 02/16/2016 - 14:44
Joerg,

Yes - I have been looking at the AKD-PDMM this morning and I can see that with the soft PLC I can implement system control as I would like. The problem I then have - if the PDMM is the master controller - what interface do I expose to the host machine for control of the system? I don't see a serial port anywhere! I was hoping that I could implement a simple message protocol over RS232 to the controller (PDMM in this case) but that doesn't look like an option....

John

Joerg Muslewski | Tue, 02/16/2016 - 15:28
John,
You can exchange user data (user variables) via ModbusTCP based on Ethernet (AKD Service Interface X32).
It works similar to ModbusRTU, just the "communication carrier" is different.

The AKD drives (Slaves) will be controlled via Motion Bus interface of the AKD-PDMM (Master) based on EtherCat.
Therefore you need AKD slave drives with EtherCat connectivity option.
 
Joerg

About this Question

John
Taxonomy: