[rutexus]

What are some of the great things these new drivers will do?

EDIT: Ok so I just read all these features on your web site.
Could you please explain what the features and benifits are from this list.
Preferably in laymans terms.
What is the likely cost of these drives?
Thanks

At this point, Vladimir says the target price of the drives is about the same as the R9xx series, but we may introduce them just a little higher to give folks an incentive to buy out our R9xx inventory.

Highlights (preliminary):

Servo Motor Drives for brush or brush-less servo motors up to 200V/40A.
This means there will be equivalent drives to the R9x series drives.

Step&Dir or SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface) motion command.
Advanced SPI motion with up to 255 points 32-bit fractional interpolation and 8 x 32-bit FIFO buffer.
The spi functions will be implimented by using a DLL. The drive will buffer the commands if they come from the control faster than they can be implimented. This will provide for smooth motion.
Up to 7 axes can be controlled from single printer port via SPI at theoretical speed up to 80Mpps.
SPI DLL (XP/W2K) available for software developers.
Build-in true real time 32-bit DRO.
I think this means you can read the position register in the drive through the spi communications at any time, including while the drive is being run with step and direction control.

Build-in safe Limit Switches input.
Encoder "tap" output - raw A/B/I and decoded clock Up/Down.
I think this means that you will have acess to the encoder signals through hardware pins at the mother board.

Output for optional external braking resistor.
Encoder Index offset counter.
I'm not sure.
Enhanced 32-bit PID filter - quieter, up to 40% faster setting time than standard PID.
I am very pleased with the PID of the R9xx series, but I take it from this that Vladimir has made it even better.

Following Error Trip adjustable from +/- 2 to +/-32766.
The R9xx drives have one pin dedicated to indicating whether the following error is more than 1000 steps. (difference between where the motor is and where it should be at any point in time while the servo motion drives it to its destination) The following error trip point can be set to any tolerance you want, any time you want through the spi. While machining, you can keep it low, while doing rapid moves you can change it if you like. The drive will keep on servoing (It won't fault) at the trip point. It will just give you a hardware signal telling you that the following error trip point has been reached. The control can respond appropriately. In step and direction mode, this error signal is handy. It would be set to your desired point during tuning, then it will trip at the preset following error. I use it in my own custom control (not for sale). If my following error is too great, I slow my step pulses down to allow the servo to catch up. If it doesn't catch up in a preset time, I report to the operator that the following error is excessive. If still not corrected, the control stops sending step pulses to the drive.

Encoder fault detection - no motor runaway with faulty encoder.
Stall rotor detection.
Real time monitoring of the motor current, voltage and following error via SPI.
Flashing status LED - different flashing sequence for different errors.
"Soft motion" error recovery.
Low cost and opto-isolated motherboards with build in DC/DC converter.
RJ45 style cable (standard network cable) can be used for encoder.
Interface to single ended (TTL) or differential (RS422 line driver) encoders.
Available for sale - Early 2005.

I talked to Vladimir last evening. He is preparing the first shipment of 2010 drives and mother boards for me along with a good number of R90H (40 Amp) drives. These R90H drives are great sellers lately and I have a hard time keeping inventory in stock on them.

I am looking forward to reading and editing the documentation myself. I learned last night that it is not done yet. We are getting closer though. Soon I'll have them in my hands, along with the DLL.

We will have to wait until we have them and the documentation before I can make many more comments. Vladimir and I have talked about these and other features, but until I see them, I prefer not to comment, lest I spread rumors.

The drives will have flash memory. Most of the hardware in the drives has been proven by the R9xx series, although some has been improved. Faster CPU's have made the PC based cnc control viable, and this added speed and power is also enhancing the servo drives. If new software features are added, I expect to be able to download the updates into the drives for users.
There will be no potentiometers on the boards. All setup and tuning will be done in the windows 2000 and xp environment.

Tom Eldredge
Rutex LLC

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