XC4e PWM Digital Drive

The XC4e PWM digital drive is Aerotech’s high-performance single-axis motor drive to control brushless DC, brush DC, voice coil or stepper motors at up to 340 VDC operating voltage and 30 A peak current capability. All versions are compatible with the Automation 3200 motion platform utilizing the HyperWire motion bus.

The digitally closed current loop and servo-loop ensure the highest level of positioning accuracy and rate stability. This allows loop closure rates up to 20 kHz as well as digital and analog I/O processing, data collection, process control, and encoder multiplication tasks in real time.

Standard features include Safe Torque Off (STO), a data array consisting of over 16 million 32-bit elements, digital and analog I/O, 1-axis Position Synchronized Output (PSO), dedicated home and end-of-travel limit inputs, and an enhanced current sense device. Encoder support includes square-wave, sine-wave and absolute encoders.

The standard XC4e accepts square-wave encoder feedback at rates of up to 40 million counts-per-second. Sine-wave encoders can be multiplied by up to 65,536 with the optional encoder multiplier feature. Dual-multiplied encoder feedback is supported.

Each single-axis XC4e PWM digital drive can be ordered with the MX2 high-performance single encoder multiplier or the MX3 high-performance dual-loop encoder multiplier, enabling higher levels of position and velocity control. Also available are a wide variety of extensions to the base PSO functionality. Track up to three encoders in real time with 3-axis PSO or extend PSO’s functionality to kinematic arrangements through the use of Aerotech’s Part-Speed PSO feature.

Each drive has an optional I/O expansion board to greatly increase the number of I/O points. This I/O board includes a dedicated PSO output and a PSO synchronization input, often used to synchronize process control with an external mode-locked frequency input.