Siemens SINAMICS S120 Equipment Manual page 23

Drive for multi-axis applications
The trend towards separate axes in mechanical engineering is growing all the time. Where
possible, central drives are being replaced by electronically coordinated servo drives. These
require drives with a connected DC link, which allows cost-saving energy balancing between
braking and driving axes.
SINAMICS S120 features infeeds and inverters that cover a large power range, are designed
for seamless integration, and enable space-saving, multi-axis drive configurations.
New system architecture with a central control unit
Electronically coordinated individual drives work together to perform your drive tasks. Higher-
level controllers operate the drives to achieve the required coordinated movement. This
requires cyclic data exchange between the controller and all the drives. This exchange
always had to take place via a field bus, which required a great deal of time and effort for
installation and configuration. SINAMICS S120 takes a different approach. A central control
unit controls the drive for all connected axes and also establishes the technological links
between the axes. Since all the required data is stored in the central control unit, it does not
need to be transferred. Cross-axis connections can be established within a control unit and
easily configured in the STARTER commissioning tool using a mouse.
Simple technological tasks can be carried out automatically by the SINAMICS S120 control
unit. For complex numerical or motion-control tasks, high-performance SINUMERIK or
SIMOTION D modules are used instead.
DRIVE-CLiQ – a digital interface between all components
All SINAMICS S120 components, including the motors and encoders, are interconnected via
a joint serial interface called DRIVE-CLiQ. The standardized cables and connectors reduce
the variety of different parts and cut storage costs.
Converter boards for converting standard encoder signals to DRIVE-CLiQ are available for
third-party motors or retrofit applications.
Booksize Power Sections
Equipment Manual, (GH2), 04.2004 Edition, 6SL3097-2AC00-0BP0
System Overview
1.4 Introduction
1-5