Trio extends automation control capabilities
At the SPS exhibition held in Germany in November 2022, Trio Motion Technology launched several products, including a servo drive, a new motion coordinator, and an industrial PC.
The UK automation vendor launched the DX3 servo drive for high performance motion control. The single-axis DX3 drive has two versions, an EtherCAT drive supporting update rates down to 125us, and a conventional drive supporting pulse-and-direction, analogue and CANopen control. The DX3 increases Trio’s power range with sizes from 50W to 7.5kW, all with a compact footprint, in 200V and 400V versions. The servo drive also extends Trio’s cost-optimal design ethos by removing functionality such as I/O already included in a separate controller.
Trio also showcased its new Flex-X Nano motion controller, which the company brands as a motion coordinator. The Flex-X Nano is a pocket-sized, I/O slice design for compact machine and cabinet build with high performance servo control over EtherCAT. The motion controller draws on Trio’s existing Flex-6 Nano design and can control up to 64 axes, but the Flex-X Nano now increases application performance by as much as 25%.
The Gloucestershire-based company is also releasing a new version of its three-axis pulse-and-direction motion controller. The MC403-X is interchangeable with the existing MC403 controller but now has an upgraded microprocessor for faster program execution.
Providing motion control performance over EtherCAT in a PC format, Trio’s PC-MCAT-2 Industrial PC also made its debut at SPS. The PC-MCAT-2 operates as a controller, combining Trio’s Motion-iX motion engine with Windows 10, which can also integrate additional applications and components thanks to extended Ethernet and USB ports. PC-MCAT-2 can integrate devices such as vision systems while controlling Trio’s SCARA robots or DX series servo axes.
