Brushless alternating current electric servo motor drive
AssigneeWhedco, Inc.
InventorPaul W. Firehammer
Life of this patent
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AssigneeWhedco, Inc.
InventorPaul W. Firehammer
Estimating the term…
AC servo motor drives which allow several AC drives to be connected in parallel and allow for the connection and reconnection of AC servo motors to be accomplished primarily through a central processing unit (CPU). Thus, multiple AC servo motor drives may be ganged under the supervision of the CPU to provide a servo motor with multiple times the current available from a single drive and optionally redundancy in the drives. To provide necessary coordination, the required motor current magnitude and phase (current vector) are broadcast by an axis controller to the drives. This command current vector is broadcast over a high speed serial data bus which allows many simultaneous listeners (the AC servo motor drives). To protect against damage to each drive, each of the three current output terminals is preceded by an output filter. The output filters preceding the terminals permit phase by phase parallel connection of several drives in the service of one servo motor. In the preferred embodiment the drives, CPU, power supply and other major components are modular and plugged into a rack backplane with a double bus structure built therein. The functional modules derive and supply their low voltage power and commands to and from the upper bus structure. However, the new rack backplane configuration includes a high voltage motor drive power bus spaced from the upper bus structure. The new backplane configuration provides a machine controller that eliminates the task of wiring a motor power supply to each AC servo motor drive module.
A modular machine controller comprising a plurality of three phase electric servo motor drive modules, an axis module which accepts servo motor shaft rotational position information and in response to broadcast current command vector information, and means in each servo motor drive module to including a digital signal processor to selectably accept the broadcast current command vector information and in response to convert the selected current command vector information into three separate motor drive currents separated in phase by 120°,
A three phase electric servo motor drive comprising a communication controller having means including a digital signal processor to supply three command currents to each of three phase circuits, said command currents 120° apart in phase,
A plurality of three phase electric servo motor drives gangable together to supply current to a single motor, each of the servo motor drives including a digital signal processor in the drive, and, a pulse width modulator and a pair of switches controlled by the pulse width modulator in each of the three phase circuits in each servo motor drive, and
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.