Posted to News on 23rd Nov 2020, 08:56
Drive controllers upgrade high-bay warehouse
KEB Automation has helped a customer in Germany convert its high-bay warehouse storage and retrieval machine from an older generation of frequency inverters to its new COMBIVERT F6 drive controller
The warehouse is owned and operated by a mail order business that was looking for a cost effective retrofit solution that would not require the additional cost of having the existing motors replaced as well. The high-bay warehouse is made up of nine aisles, each with 106 positions along its length (on both sides of the aisle) and 28 positions in height, again on both sides of the aisle.
With the focus very much on cost, the mail order company sought counsel and proposals from a number of potential suppliers, but only KEB provided a solution that didn’t involve changing all the motors as well, recommending its COMBIVERT F6 which can run with all motors. With this unit, users can operate not just KEB’s motors but a variety of other motor types from different manufacturers as well.
KEB says that its COMBIVERT F6 range of high performance single-axis drive controllers are compact, energy efficient and flexible for a wide variety of control applications in automated, safety-oriented machines. The drives provide motor control in real time, as well as integrated safety functionality. The drive controllers are 100% in-house designed and built by KEB Automation themselves and the drives are available in seven different enclosure sizes with power ranges from 4kW up to 400kW.
The drives are either air or liquid-cooled (integral or push-through mounting) and can be customised with a variety of design options to suit specific applications. Safety functionality can be selected in modules to suit the requirements of the machine. In addition to the control of widely-supported motor types such as synchronous, asynchronous, permanent magnet, synchronous reluctance, linear, high-torque motor and high speed, the COMBIVERT F6 is said by KEB to offer additional functions such as automatic anti-cogging and optimised torque pre-control for both linear and non-linear kinematics.
On this application, KEB Automation’s regional industrial partner Vogel-Hemer assisted the customer by installing the new hardware in the warehouse, including the F6 drive controller, S6 servo drive and a C6 industrial PC.
