Providing Advanced Servo Solutions

National Instruments officials announced the expansion of the company’s motion control offering through a collaboration with Kollmorgen. These products include drives, motors, linear positioners, gearheads, cables, and accessories. This collaboration between two of the industry leaders in motion control makes the design of sophisticated machinery and equipment easier.

NI provides a variety of motion hardware, all programmed through the National Instruments LabVIEW NI SoftMotion Module and based on the LabVIEW reconfigurable I/O architecture, to help engineers create customized and highly configurable motion systems tightly integrated with NI's broad measurement and control I/O portfolio. Kollmorgen extends that offering to include best-in-class servo technology across a variety of drive and motor product families.

For example, Kollmorgen's EtherCAT AKD brushless servo drive is integrated directly with NI SoftMotion, empowering machine builders to create high-axis-count servo systems without EtherCAT programming. These servo systems are inherently synchronized with any other modules in an NI PXI or NI CompactRIO system. NI also sells the new single-cable AKM motor globally, which combines motor power and feedback signals in one connector, reducing wiring cost and complexity.

"NI offers a new global channel and unrivaled customer support for our products," says Ray Butler, vice president and general manager for the Americas at Kollmorgen. "NI reconfigurable motion controllers and Kollmorgen servo system technology provide a one-two punch that can knock out your toughest engineering challenges."