Touchscreens keep a finger on motion control

Baldor has added two advanced touchscreen operator interface panels to its range of motion control system building accessories.

Baldor has added two advanced touchscreen operator interface panels to its range of motion control system building accessories.

The panels provide rugged display facilities for industrial machinery, capable of displaying sophisticated quarter VGA size graphical man-machine interfaces, or up to 16 lines by 40 characters of text.

The panels are fully supported by Baldor's Mint motion software for simple integration into motion control-related application programs, and can be interfaced to motion controllers via RS232/RS422 or the CANopen fieldbus.

The first new panel - KPD009-502 - features a bright TFT colour 5.6 in display (320 x 240pixel), with an analogue resistive touch screen that can be configured to create interactive cells.

The second panel, KPD009-501, provides the same basic capability but with a monochrome display.

Graphic displays may be created by any Windows application capable of generating a BMP format file.

Baldor also provides a utility program called HMI Operator Panel Software which can be used to define active touchscreen areas, as well as man-machine interface objects such as panel keys, indicator lamps, pushbuttons and position selector switches.

This software also handles the interaction between the operator panel and the motion control program running on the Baldor controller.

Motion and machine control parameters may additionally be displayed in easy-to-comprehend forms such as bar graphs.

Each panel has 8Mbit of Flash EPROM to store the finished application-specific display.

The availability of a fieldbus option for the CANopen protocol, allows users to position the Baldor panels anywhere around a machine, saving a great deal of wiring and assembly labour.

This distance can be as much as tens of metres if required, supporting even very large machinery applications such as packaging, production assembly and textile processing equipment.

The new displays may be used with any of Baldor's wide range of motion controllers, which range from OEM options such as PCIbus cards, to ready-to-use controllers in packaged wall- or panel-mounting forms.

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