Sprint and Bardac Introduce DC Drive Control System

Sprint Electric, in cooperation with their USA partner Bardac drives, recently introduced an Ethernet-based distributed control system for DC drives at the recent SPS/IPC/Drives show in Nuremberg, Germany. Drive.web includes graphical configuration tools that provide diagnostics and configurability of all drives on the network, either locally or remotely via the Internet. The graphical tools allow the full configuration of the drives, provide service diagnostics, full documentation and an operator interface for local control, all without the need for a PLC or supervisory computer. The drive.web hardware consists of an Ethernet port and processor that takes information dynamically from the drive and makes it available over the Ethernet network. Additional hardware includes interfaces to AC drives and remote I/O modules that provide increased access to the network for other control elements. The configuration software runs on the platform-independent Java operating system, therefore the control system will run on PCs, Macs and Linux based computers. The software provides graphical configuration and documentation tools for AC and DC drives, start-up / commissioning assistance with real time information from the drive and network and a very clean operator interface with dynamic access to machine information. The drive.web control technology is cost-effective in systems of any size and complexity, without the need for a PLC or supervisory computer.