Schneider Electric simplifies motion control offer with Lexium 32 servo drive launch

(25/03/2010)

Schneider Electric has launched its Lexium 32 range of three servo drives and two servo motor types. The new simplified drive range comes in a compact book style, offering maximum efficiency in a reduced space.

The Lexium 32 range has been developed to meet OEM architectures, with advanced tuning features and motors with a wide machine inertia. Applications span a wide range of machinery including printing, textiles, packaging and material working and handling.

These new products also work seamlessly with the new book style Altivar 32 range of variable speed drives due to be launched by Schneider Electric in April and which will feature at the Drives & Controls exhibition in June.

A key feature of the new Lexium range is its compact book size which sees the servo drive in combination with the servo motor, delivering maximum power in the minimum area, saving up to 50 per cent of the space in the machine control cabinet. With its breadth of fieldbus communication and encoder cards, the Lexium 32 range adapts to a wide variety of current architectures.

Paul Pryor of Schneider Electric says: “By rationalising our range we are making product selection much simpler, at the same time as offering a range of motion bundles that will suit a wide variety of applications. For the OEM, this new product series offers a number of benefits including the capability to improve performance and productivity and reduce machine costs with in-built safety functions. With the Lexium 32’s compact design there is also the added advantage of being able to offer best-in-class power density in small cabinets.”

The three servo drive options are the 32C (compact) for simpler machines, 32A (advanced) for motion centric applications and 32M (modular) for PLC-centric applications. The two servo motor ranges, the BMH and BSH, are designed to meet demands for high performance, power and simplicity of use in motion control applications in power ratings between 0.15 and 7 kW.

The Lexium 32 servo drive offer is designed to simplify the life cycle of machines. It is integrated into the Schneider Electric automation tool, SoMachine for efficient machine engineering, with side-by-side mounting and colour-coded plug-in connectors making installation, set up and maintenance easier. Maintenance is also made quicker with new duplication and back-up tools. Improved performance is delivered by the optimised motor control, which reduces vibration with automatic parameter calculation, speed observer and additional band-stop filter which combine to increase machine productivity.

Depending on the model, the Lexium 32 servo drive range has a variety of logic or analogue inputs and outputs as standard which can be configured to best suit the individual application. It also has control interfaces for easy access to various architecture levels including pulse train, a combined CANopen/CANmotion port for enhanced control system performance and access via communication cards to main communication networks and fieldbuses. Protocols available include DeviceNet, EtherNet/IP and PROIBUS DPV1.

The Lexium 32 drives also form part of the control’s safety system by integrating the “Safe Torque Off” (STO) function, which prevents unintended restarting of the servo motor. This function complies with standard IEC/EN 61508 level SIL2 governing electrical installations and the power drive systems standard IEC/EN 61800-1.

The range’s BMH and BSH servo motors are synchronous three-phase motors featuring a SinCos Hiperface encoder for sending data automatically from the servo motor to the servo drive and are available with or without a brake. Very compact, the motors offer a high power density and deliver precision and high dynamic performance with options available to suit most applications. Consistency between the BSH and BSM increases potential efficiencies in machine design and reduces the coupling and cabling stocks required.

Related categories:  Industrial   Motor control   Speed drives