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The small black electronic device pictured here is part of a motion control system, but is not an element of the amplifier, the controller or the power supply. It is, in fact, a complete stand-alone system servo controller and amplifier.

Animatics Corporation, Santa Clara, CA, adapted technology from their SmartMotors line to create the RTC-3000, which will operate virtually any brushed or brushless DC servomotor of frame size 12 or smaller. The controller's design is also suited to running motors with a wide range of inductance, including low-inductance motors that are otherwise difficult to drive. The package, measuring 3.68- x 1.815- x 0.35-in. (about the size of a stack of 35 business cards), includes the controller, amplifier and logic power supplies, plus a program interpreter with 32K of program memory and 32K of data storage. With an output of 24 W continuous/50 W peak, the unit's aluminum case easily provides secondary duty as a heat sink.

Designed originally for multi-axis applications, the small size of the controller/amplifier device permits installation immediately next to a motor, reducing the amount of system cabling and distributing the control and I/O functions throughout the machine. The RTC-3000 will interact with a host or a PLC over RS-232 or RS-485 lines, and up to 120 RTC-3000s can be linked together on a single RS-485 network. The device can also multi-task between internal program and host commands.

The RTC-3000 employs the same command set that has allowed SmartMotors to control entire machines. There are inputs for the encoder, the motor, the Hall sensors (if BLDC), as well as general-purpose I/O, an additional encoder input and connections for Step & Direction signals. The general-purpose I/O includes several channels of 10 bit analog input. Additionally, like the SmartMotors, the RTC-3000 has an "AniLink Network" that allows ties into an array of LCD displays, PushWheel banks, Opto-22 racks, and other devices.

--RM

For more information:

Circle 555. - Animatics Corp.