Siemens SINAMICS S120 Equipment Manual page 36

System overview
3.2 SINAMICS S120 drive system
Figure 3-3 SINAMICS S120 system overview
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
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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Air-cooled chassis power units
Manual, 07/2019, 6SL3097-4AE00-0BP9