Siemens SINAMICS S120 Equipment Manual page 22

System overview
1.2 SINAMICS S120 drive system
Figure 1-3 SINAMICS S120 system overview
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 control and all the drives. This exchange usually
took 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 drives
and/or axes. Since all the required data is stored in the central Control Unit, it does not need
to be transferred. Inter-axis connections can be established within a Control Unit and easily
configured in the STARTER commissioning tool using a mouse.
The SINAMICS S120 Control Unit solves basic technological tasks autonomously. For
complex numerical or motion-control tasks, high-performance SIMOTION D modules are
used instead.
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Chassis Liquid Cooled Power Units
Manual, (GH7), 01/2011, 6SL3097-4AM00-0BP1