Control.com - Nerds in Control

Hello-

Could anyone share their experiences with PowerLink Motion Control Solutions, specifically with Baldor Motion? I am being asked to use it in a relatively simple point to point 3 Axis System that requires high integrity operation (i.e. it better get from A to B reliably in the alloted time or other expensive stuff breaks).

Do these systems experience network faults & if so, how does the controller & amps respond/recover?

Thanks...

I don't know much about PowerLink other than a lot of big name people put their name in that hat... or they are betting the farm on it, however you want to word it... i.e. Baldor and Parker... so it must not be that bad... In fact, if those two are riding the band wagon or that horse, then it is probably pretty good...

If you are already VERY familiar with motion a 2-3 day class with baldor would be plenty to get you going, or talk to a good distributor for baldor that has AEs... If you have a simple application it will be robust in no time. If you don't have motion experience, you'd better find somebody to help you (if you don't want to break expensive machine parts ).

One suggestion I will give you in general, regardless of hardware, put in the hooks... Go the extra mile to make the system easy to troubleshoot and maintain... your customer will appreciate it.

I did a 2-axis Baldor EPL system, and regret it. If you are only using 3 axes, and your drives don't need distributed control, then I wouldn't use EPL. There is a learning curve with it, and I don't believe all the bugs are worked out yet. It is very powerful in that you should be able to get a lot of information over the network, but I was not able to do that without the network choking.

Let us know more about your system, and maybe we can recommend an alternative.