Nanotec - New SMCI36 motor controller

The new SMCI36 controller is distinguished by its compact construction and comes with a ClosedLoop-capable encoder input. Nanotec only utilizes real ClosedLoop, meaning that the stator magnetic field is controlled via the rotary encoder, as with a servomotor. The stepper motor can no longer lose any more steps, all the way up to its maximum torque. The current magnitude is continually adjusted to the presently required torque. This substantially decreases current consumption and heat development in comparison with conventional stepper motor controllers which leads not only to reduced electrical power requirements but also to a longer service life for components.

The combination of dspDrive® technology and the SMCI 36 model provides for especially quiet-running, low-vibration stepper motors, as required for medical technology, laboratory automation, optical devices, etc. In the normal clock direction mode too, stepper motors operated with this software-based current controller (dspDrive) are essentially quieter compared to established solutions using off-the-shelf ICs, as the entire control circuit is handled with 12-bit resolution. Thanks to the software-based control circuit, both stepper and BLDC motors can be controlled with the same hardware.

The bus interface type RS485 or CANopen can be set by jumpers. For programming the drive Nanotec offers the user-friendly Windows GUI NanoPro.

The CANopen version of the SMCI36 makes the most of its advantages in distributed automation solutions. Motors activated with the compact SMCI36 can be easily integrated in CANopen bus systems and configured via the CAN bus. For example, there is already a complete driver for the SoftSPS program CoDeSys V3 SoftMotion available from 3S Smart Software Solutions GmbH for integrating the controllers in multiple axle applications by means of the CANopen Interpolated mode.