High-performance drive controllers.

Aerotech has introduced two high-performance single-axis controllers: the digital XC4 and XC4e PWMs. They are suitable for driving brushed or brushless DC motors as well as moving coil actuators and stepper motors. A special feature besides the position-synchronized outputs (PSO) is the HyperWire® fibre optic interface.

Aerotech’s digital XC4 and XC4e PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) controllers are powerful, single-axis motor drive controllers with an operating voltage up to 340VDC and a peak current of 30A. All drive variants are compatible with the A3200 automation platform which uses the HyperWire® drive bus. The digital current and position control loop ensures best positioning and synchronisation accuracy, a control bandwidth of up to 20kHz, processing of digital and analogue inputs and outputs, data acquisition, process control and real-time encoder interpolation.

Standard features include Safe Torque Off (STO), a data array with over 4 (XC4) or 16 million (XC4e) 32-bit elements, digital and analogue I/Os, single-axis (XC4) and multi-axis (XC4e) position-synchronised outputs (PSO), special inputs for referencing and travel limitation and improved current monitoring. Square wave, sine wave and absolute encoder signals can be processed. The maximum input frequency for square-wave encoder signals is 40 million pulses per second for both variants. With the additional MX1 function, the XC4 drive controller can interpolate sinusoidal encoder signals with up to 14 bits (16,384-fold). For the XC4e, the additional MX2 and MX3 functions are available as an option, which enable interpolation of 16 bits (65,536x), and with the MX3 option, the processing of two encoder signals, achieving improved position and speed control. In addition, options are available for the XC4e that extend the standard PSO functionality. For example, three encoders can be tracked in real time via the 3-channel PSO, or a complete axis system can provide a PSO signal depending on the actual point in the room.

Both XC4 variants can be equipped with an optional I/O expansion card, which significantly increases the number of inputs and outputs. The I/O card also offers a dedicated PSO output and PSO synchronisation input, which is often used to synchronise with a mode-locked external frequency.

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