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About The Author: Johs Heijmink, Design Engineer at Bosch Rexroth
Johs Heijmink works at Bosch Rexroth as a Design Engineer and has more than 25 years of experience in drive and control technology. In those years he was able to devise and commission many drive and control solutions. Drives are used in many fields of application, from packaging machines, robotics, machine tooling to simulators.
Johs has a lot of experience with simulators, in both motion systems and control loading. In the early years of MPS, he also proposed the drive principle for MPS.
Johs Heijmink explains how the MPS simulators perform optimally with the Bosch Rexroth drives:
Bosch Rexroth is a manufacturer of drive and control systems, deployed all over the world. The requirements that MPS sets for the drives of its simulators are many times higher than the requirements that are normally set in machine construction. In order to achieve an optimal drive for control loading, the drive must have an optimal control.
To start with, brushless permanent magnet servo motors are used. This type of motor can combine optimum holding power in an extremely compact design. The feedback in the motor is designed to achieve a resolution of more than 4 * 10^9 positions. This is even higher with the new-generation motors and gives MPS the opportunity to control the simulator perfectly.
The digital Bosch Rexroth servodrive of the Indradrive Cs type is used to control the servomotor. The drive is responsible for the commutation of the motor with a PWM of 4 to 16 kHz. With a Velocity loop of 250 microseconds (125 microseconds with the advanced drive), the drive can generate setpoints dynamically.
The MLC75 higher-level motion controller handles the processing of the setpoints obtained from the MPS simulation model. With a capacity of 5 microseconds for 1000 mixed instructions, sufficient speed is available for smooth controlling. Mass inertia in (real) mechanics is also simulated in the control algorithms.
Force sensors in the mechanics make the closed loop with the calculation model with which the simulator feels almost identical as if you were sitting in a real airplane.
Bosch Rexroth has recently launched the new ctrlX AUTOMATION platform. This new Uniform and hardware-independent control architecture based on real-time-capable Linux platform is based on apps. For MPS, this has the advantage of being able to program with new high-level program languages such as Python, C/C++ and having them interact with the drive in real-time. For HMI solutions, universal web-based engineering can be used.
Using Bosch Rexroth drives – and in the future – in combination with the ctrlX AUTOMATION platform, gives MPS optimal user experience in their systems and makes sure they are ready for the future!
About Bosch Rexroth:
As one of the world’s leading suppliers of drive and control technologies, Bosch Rexroth ensures efficient, powerful, and safe movement in machines and systems of any size. The company bundles global application experience in the market segments of Mobile Applications, Machinery Applications and Engineering, and Factory Automation. With its intelligent components, customized system solutions and services, Bosch Rexroth is creating the necessary environment for fully connected applications. Bosch Rexroth offers its customers hydraulics, electric drive and control technology, gear technology and linear motion and assembly technology, including software and interfaces to the Internet of Things. With locations in over 80 countries more than 29,600 associates generated sales revenue of around 5.2 billion euros in 2020.
