Servo drives

A 'plug-in-and-spin' design on Parker Hannifin's Aries range of digital servo drives is claimed to eliminate time-consuming manual set-up, while ensuring that the drives deliver optimum performance, whatever the application. When connected to Parker Smart Encoder motors, the drives automatically configure themselves quickly and accurately, without the need for user intervention.

These drives are available in five versions with ratings from 100 W to 1.3 kW. This choice of models allows users to match the size of drive to the requirements of their application, so they only pay for the performance they need. All models are designed to operate from 120/240 VAC supplies and are offered with optional 120/240 V keep-alive circuitry.

By default, Aries drives are supplied ready for operation in torque amplifier mode, but they can be configured in software to run in velocity mode. Step-and-direction versions are also available, allowing the new drives to be used to replace stepper systems and in applications where a step-and-direction command interface already exists.

While automatic set-up is offered only when Aries drives are used with Parker Smart Encoder motors, the open architecture of the drives means that they can also be used with almost any modern brushless rotary or linear servo motor and with most types of motion controller. In addition, the drives are fully compatible with standard quadrature encoders.