Three-phase AC motor drives

The MotiFlex e100 extends Baldor’s range of three-phase AC motor drives with three higher power versions rated for continuous outputs from 21.5 to 33.5 A, making them suitable for continuous and heavy-duty applications including printing, papermaking, textiles, plastics and steel production.

These higher power units provide the means to bring large AC induction motors into the ethernet Powerlink control network and can be used in both centralised control and distributed ‘intelligent drive’ scenarios.

Each drive features a 100 Mbps ethernet hub, enabling systems to be built using simple daisy-chain connection, reducing the cabling and cost of large multi-axis systems. Each drive can operate independently or within a shared DC bus system. In a shared system, power regenerated back into any drive during the deceleration phase of an axis may be utilised by the other axes, saving energy costs. As each drive has a local capacitor bank, an external braking resistor is often not required, because the total capacitance of the system may be sufficient to store the energy without reaching the overvoltage limit.

The AC-DC converter stage in each drive is capable of supplying power not only to itself, but also to a drive or combination of drives of the same total rating, negating the need for a separate power supply unit. For multi-axis systems, only one set of contactors, MCBs and terminal blocks is needed for the whole system.