The recent SPS/IPC/Drives exhibition in Germany marked the debut of a new generation of Schneider Electric’s PacDrive motion control system. The Ethernet-based PacDrive 3 uses Sercos III and a new software development environment to cut engineering time. The previous limit of 99 servo axes and/or 30 robots has been boosted to 255 Sercos nodes or 254 servo axes with a 1ms network update rate.

The new system (shown above) includes two multi-axis servo drives: the modular Lexium LXM 62 single- and dual-axis drives with shared power supplies that can also power Schneider’s iSH integrated servo motors; and the standalone Lexium LXM 52 drives with integrated power supplies. Schneider says the LXM 62 can halve cabinet space for installations of seven or eight axes.

The new CoDeSys-based SoMachine Motion software development environment includes tools for motion system design, drive selection and program development, as well as HMI tools for commissioning, diagnostics and data handling. A tool for safety-related automation is planned.

Also in the pipeline is a multi-user system for graphic structuring of machine functions, further simplifying software engineering. The Edesign system will use a shared database, allowing everyone involved in developing a machine program to work on the same software.