November/December 2020

CONTROLTECHNIQUES has announced an easy-to-install dedicated pump drive with built-in functions designed to achieve optimum pumping performance out-of-the-box. The F600 drive forms part of CT’s new Specialist range of industry-specific drives, and spans the power range 1.1kW–2.8MW. There are dedicated functions for pipe filling and cleaning, over-cycling and dry-run prevention, and switch control, as well as control modes for fans, single pumps, and cascaded and multi-leader pump systems. Because energy consumption represents around 85% of a typical pump’s lifecycle costs, optimising energy usage can cut the cost of owning and running a pump dramatically. To help control these costs, the drives have built-in energy-saving functions, including a sleep mode, which engages automatically when demand falls below a specific point, and a motor control technology that modifies the rated frequency dynamically to save further energy. Control Techniques’PC tools include pump set-up screens that guide users through the process. Parameters are grouped in a single menu, simplifying installation, set-up and operation. “F600 marks a new direction for Control Techniques, giving us a specialist product to support industries which have previously relied on our more general-purpose offer,”says CT’s global product manager, Patrik Masson.“This new range provides the perfect solution for users working with pump applications. We’ve ensured industry-specific features are baked into the drive itself, so its capabilities and the terminology used will feel instantly familiar.” F600 drives with ratings up to 55kW are eligible for Control Techniques’free five-year extended warranty, rather than the standard two years. https://acim.nidec.com/drives/control-techniques TECHNOLOGY n n Control Techniques unveils dedicated pump drive Control Techniques’ F600 drive is dedicated to pump applications p The German embedded technologies specialist dSpace has released an ACmotor control system for developing complex control algorithms for frequency converters and electric drives. The MicroAutoBox III system is aimed at making electric vehicles more robust, economical and cheaper, but can also be applied to industrial motors. It includes a library of I/O functions optimised for the development of inverter control via an easily configurable interface. www.dspace.com p The OPC Foundation has joined forces with CESMII , the US national institute for smart manufacturing, to launch an initiative to specify howOPC UA informationmodels of machines, Scada and MES will be stored in, and accessed via, cloud-based databases. It will allowmanufacturers to access OPC UA informationmodels and profiles for use in their pre-built shopfloor and business digitalisation applications. An OPC UA Cloud Library working group set up to drive the initiative has more than 20 members including ABB , Atlas Copco, Bosch , IBM , Microsoft , SAP , Softing and Wago . www.opcfoundation.org p Renishaw is collaborating with a UK start-up Additive Automations in a project to automate metal additive manufacturing (AM) post-processing, using cobots to perform support structure removal. The project could cut the average cost of parts by 25%, boosting AM’s potential as an option for large-volume production lines. http://renishaw.com/additive www.additiveautomations.com