Hi All,

I have a Baldor FlexDrive (about 10 yrs old) along with a Baldor BSM50N-375AA motor which I want to configure so that the motor will rotate 360 degrees when following the output from an optical shaft encoder that can produces 1024 pulses per revolution.

In the setup software (Flex, V1.09) there are 3 available operation modes - current mode, velocity mode and pulse following, can someone explain the meaning of each please.

I have run the desktop control software using COM1 connecting the PC to the controller, and the controller attached to the motor's resolver.

With the motor disabled, I see 65536 (actually +-32k) counts per rotation of the motor (by hand), does that sound reasonable ?

Flex appears to be a 16 bit app. Are there any known issues running this using XP ?

Also, are there any well written tutorials that I might benefit from reading ? The whole world of industrial servo control is quite new to me and I keep tripping up over terminology issues.

Many thanks,

Mark

 

I think you are missing a piece of the puzzle, you will possibly need a motion controller. Baldor sells some that used the MINT language that will likely do what you need. What you have is a drive and a motor. Unless you have a Flex+ drive, which has motion programming built in.

The drive has three modes in this case: torque, velocity, and pulse following. Torque simply reads an +-10 VDC analog input and the motor outputs a proportional torque, there is no speed control. Velocity mode reads the analog signal and the motor runs at a speed proportional to the input signal. Pulse following is actually a position mode, the motor will hold position and move according to the number of pulses on it's digital inputs.

If you need only a simple electronic gearing, where the motor follows an encoder with a variable ration, then the pulse following mode may work for you. Otherwise, you will need some form of motion programmability. A motion controller typically reads the encoder output from the drive and/or an external encoder and sends an analog velocity or torque command to the drive. You can then program complex position and velocity profiles.

I hope this gives you some direction.
Bill Sturm

 

It seems your motor has resolver and not encoder. And you must configure resolver for need resolution inside corresponding option for resolver - I believe it exist inside FlexDrive.

 

Hi Bill,

No missing pieces, I have it all working as required using the basic Baldor FlexDrive unit.

Many thanks for your descriptions, it clarified lots of things that seem trivial now.

Regards,
Mark