National Instruments Releases New Servo Drives and Motors

By DE Editors

National Instruments has announced new AKD Servo Drives and AKM Servo Motors that make it possible for engineers and scientists to build scalable, distributed motion control systems.

The company says the new products simplify setup and configuration for deploying custom motion applications to any NI real-time controller supporting NI EtherCAT technology including NI CompactRIO, PXI real-time controllers and NI industrial controllers. Additionally, National Instruments is releasing the NI LabVIEW 2010 NI SoftMotion Module that provides support for NI EtherCAT drives for simplified motion application development.

The new AKM brushless servo motors are available in four different frame sizes and feature high torque, density and speed ranges. The motors use low-inertia rotors and feature low-cog, low-harmonic distortion magnetic design. The motors also are matched with NI servo drives and provide plug-and-play configuration with integrated Smart Feedback Device (SFD)  technology and simplified cabling.

The new AKD Servo Drives feature setup and configuration through EtherCAT technology and integration with the LabVIEW project, a feature in LabVIEW software that engineers use to group together LabVIEW and third-party files, create build specifications for executables and deploy or download files to hardware targets. The new drives deliver torque loop updates in 0.67 μs, and velocity and position loops at 62.5 μs and 125 μs.

For more information, visit National Instruments.

Sources:  Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.