Rockwell reduces material and labour costs with new servo drive

Rockwell Automation has launched the ArmorKinetix distributed servo drives as an extension of the Kinetix 5700 platform, providing customers with a scalable drive solution that helps them deliver leaner, greener, and more powerful machine designs.

Manufacturers are increasingly seeking scalable solutions that simplify their machine control architectures, minimise the number of components, reduce manufacturing time, and optimize productivity. ArmorKinetix distributed servo drives enable customers to achieve these goals by providing a simplified architecture that mounts the servo solution outside of an electrical cabinet. As a result, machines can now be designed to be more modular while reducing cabinet size, cabling, and cooling requirements.

The smart servo drives also include vibration and thermal sensors that can detect potential machine issues, providing the ability to proactively identify and address problems and increase system uptime. This proactive approach is a catalyst for increased productivity.

“Rockwell Automation has worked closely with customers to align the ArmorKinetix Distributed Servo Drives with customer application needs,” said Jon Vanderpas, product manager at Rockwell Automation. “This product is special because it not only provides industry-leading performance and precision to individual processes, but it also enables a more optimised way for people to design and operate automation equipment. This device is available in a wide power range that addresses the diverse needs of manufacturers across the industrial landscape.”

Companies now have a new opportunity to reduce the cost of manufacturing their machines, while increasing the scalability of their control architecture, improving energy efficiency, and creating more supportable machines.

This new distributed servo drive technology lowers total system costs, improves productivity and increases uptime for manufacturers, making it a desirable option to enabling the next generation of production machines.