Ethernet servos sling needles on speedy carpet machine

摘要

Engineers at Modra Technology, Warragul, Australia, developed a servodriven machine that could quickly make samples for various carpetmakers' lines of tufted carpets. The Mtuft machine had to be flexible enough to replicate carpets made on a wide range of automated looms. The all-servo Mtuft handles motor communication over a high-speed Ethernet Powerlink network from Baldor Electric Co. The Ethernet-based motion controllers and servos avoid the real-time data transmission limits of Ethernet but still use standard Ethernet cabling. Powerlink manages message exchanges in a precise sequence that lets only one node communicate at any one time. This adds determinism to Ethernet communications.