Siemens Industry, Inc. recently announced the extension of the upper performance range of its popular Simotion D motion controllers.  The new generation of Simotion D445-2 multi-axis controllers has new features such as onboard Profinet interfaces, high-speed I/O, and with three times the performance, a single controller can support up to 128 axes of motion. Simotion D motion control systems are a suitable solution for production machines covering all levels of performance -from simple single-axis positioning tasks to complex synchronous applications -with extremely short cycle times on a large numbers of axes. Thanks to its scalability, Simotion D offers users a high degree of flexibility for the ever-changing demands on machine automation.  The Simotion D drive-based multi-axis control system not only offers PLC, motion control and advanced technology functions, but also an integrated drive control based upon Siemens Sinamics S120 drives.

Today, with the new Simotion D445-2 DP/PN and D455-2 DP/PN versions, the performance range has been extended even higher.  Compared to the previous generation, the maximum quantity has been doubled to 128 axes and the memory capacity significantly expanded.  This has increased the PLC and motion control performance by a factor of three. With Simotion D445-2 DP/PN and D455-2 DP/PN, the previously optional Profinet I/O interface has now been integrated on the modules as standard. This frees up the option slot for other expansion cards. The onboard interface is equipped with an integrated three-port switch and facilitates different network topologies such as line, star or tree structures, without the need for additional external switches. The interface not only supports real-time (RT), but also isochronous real-time (IRT) data exchange and can be operated as a controller and/or device of another controller.

In addition to the Profinet interface, Simotion D445-2 DP/PN and D455-2 DP/PN also have two Profibus and two Ethernet interfaces, as well as 28 digital I/Os, of which 16 can be used for technology tasks such as output cams and measuring inputs with micro-second resolution.