Quartet is a four-axis motion controller for a total of 20kW of servos from Israeli firm Elmo Motion Control.

Four 5kW servo drives on a single board work with a single central processing core.

“Small enough to fit in the palm of a hand, Quartet combines the simplicity and high power of centralised control with the compact size and flexibility of de-centralized servo architecture,” said the firm. The size also allows the Quartet to be incorporated into the system as an integral component rather than mounted remotely in an external cabinet.” It clarified that in its view a centralised approach tends to offer high performance multi-axis control with minimum latency, while distributed dedicated servos have better servo loops.

The module can operate stand-alone, as well as a standard EtherCAT node within a network.

Operation is over 12 – 80V, 12-100V or 12-200V, according to the firm, at 25 – 30A continuous (50 – 60A peak) .

Little more can be said here as the company has not put the product in its website yet.

A programming environment is available to implement applications, which can range across delta, scara and gantry robotics, as well as pick-and-place mounting heads, gimbals, military aiming pods, weapon guidance and mobile robots.

Elmo is taking Quartet to the EDS show next week, along with its ‘Gold Triple Twitter’ – a 270A 60V driver.