For More Information
Call (508) 435-9595, email
[email protected], or browse to
www.ctc-control.com."The idea behind CTC's EtherCAT Master module was to provide all the strengths of the EtherCAT protocol on a flexible control platform with high-level motion controls available for easy programming," Schermerhorn says. "We want our customers to be able to take advantage of EtherCAT's capabilities, without a steep learning curve. We are also big believers in the ability to use different suppliers' products in a machine or application, so that you can deploy the best features and benefits of different vendors' offerings. To give people both ease of use and choices for drives and I/O, we have pre-configured compatible devices to make them as plug-and-play as possible."
Unlike other EtherCAT Masters, CTC says M3-41A isolates the user from the complexity of the EtherCAT environment by automatically scanning the network and configuring recognized devices. High-level motion control commands are accomplished using QuickBuilder, CTC's standard programming environment.
The CTC EtherCAT Master supports servo and stepper drives, and I/O devices. The module is pre-configured for use with the following motor drives and I/O:
- Yaskawa Sigma 5
- Copley Accelnet
- Kollmorgen AKD
- Sanyo Denki SANMotion RS2E
- Control Techniques
- SMC
- I/O blocks: Beckhoff, Wago
The company says more products are being tested and pre-configured as it recognizes the need or receives requests from customers. "Users won't need to wrestle with a complex configurator, poke drive objects, or figure out how interfaces work," Schermerhorn says. "Each supported device has been verified with the M3-41A and all set-ups and initialization has been completed ahead of time. This greatly simplifies the EtherCAT installation, allowing users to concentrate on their control needs at a much higher level and the integration of their system – skipping the need for a complicated configurator. Multiple networks are supported to CTC's main and may be intermixed with other networks such as EtherNet/IP, DeviceNet, and BACnet using a separate Ethernet port."