Success Story:
Industrial pumps
Customised drive solution for industrial pumps
As a central component of every electric drive train, power electronics have important tasks in vehicles and work machines: the effective and efficient control of the electric machine. INRO products are specially adapted to the customer's specifications - whether for vehicles in harsh environments or for industrial pumps in a clean room environment. We develop the professional electronics solution that our customers need.
Electric drives can be found in a wide variety of areas, including in industrial pumps that are used to cool servers in a clean room.
Small, compact and reliable are the keywords that characterise drive controls in this area.
The customer needed a drive control unit that would work efficiently with the motor they had developed and ensure a long service life. At the same time, it had to be compact so that it could be installed at the intended location.
SMC - Single Motion Control: 1-axis control
Space-saving:
Compact sizeCostsFavourable production
Long service life:
Running time of 50,000 hPotential utilisation:
Ideal tuning for the installed engine- Additional functions
The project
in detail
In this development project, the customer's requirements were to develop an efficient drive controller that can be used reliably and with a long service life in a small installation space. The controller is used for the pump drives of a server cooling system. The overriding objective was for the drive controller to optimally control the motor designed by the company itself.
In this project too, we at INRO maintained an intensive and direct dialogue with the customer in order to optimally adapt the product to the existing system and the requirements. In this case, the aim was to find out how the drive control system had to be designed in order to utilise the existing motor in the best possible way.
During development, care was also taken to ensure that the manufacturing process was as cost-effective as possible. This enabled the customer to be presented with an attractive offer for the production of the drive control unit.
The result of this development was the SMC (Single Motion Control) - a single-axis drive controller weighing just 560 g and with a service life of over 50,000 hours. With its compact dimensions of 134 mm × 134 mm × 40 mm, it fits perfectly into the planned installation space.
The newly developed drive control can ideally control the existing motor, as well as other motor types such as asynchronous motors, synchronous reluctance motors and brushless DC motors. The Single Motion Control also has an integrated DC/DC converter (48 V / 24 V), an integrated charging circuit and various inputs and outputs, both digital and analogue. The drive control is certified in accordance with UL 61800-5-1 and IEC 61800-5-1. In addition, the drive controller already has an integrated heat sink.
Even during the development phase of one year, prototypes of the control system were made available to the customer with the help of modern 3D printers. After delivery of the controls, we continued to support the customer during commissioning and testing of the controls.
SMC
The Single Motion Controller (SMC) is a 1-axis drive controller. It offers a large number of I/Os for reading sensors and setpoint transmitters as well as for setting outputs and switching loads. This enables you to operate all types of machines with a drive, such as travelling or pump drives, efficiently, reliably and safely.
The SMC enables:
- Control of various motor types, such as ASM, SRM, BLDC, etc. (also sensorless)
- Nominal battery voltage 48 V DC
- Input voltage range +25 V..+59 V
- Various bus systems for communication such as CAN bus or MODBUS implemented
- Conformity to CE, cULus, RoHS, REACH, EMC
- Long service life with 50,000 h
- Weight 560 g
Conclusion
Regardless of the project scope and area of application, INRO has once again proven its role as a reliable technology partner in this customer project. Thanks to precise communication and many years of experience in drive technology, it was possible to realise a customised control solution that is precisely tailored to the customer's specific requirements and integrates seamlessly into the existing system architecture.
The motor developed by the customer is controlled via the SMC drive control unit in such a way that its full performance is optimally utilised. The drive control unit also has additional functions that can be ideally integrated into the customer's system. With its space-saving design and long service life, the customer's specifications were met in full.
