One of the benefits for engineers who have been using IE3 motors with an encoder is that they can save energy and costs by switching to IE4 motors without an encoder. Moreover, new generation Nord inverters are claimed to be capable of performing drive-related PLC functions, which can relieve external controllers. In some cases, previously used mini-controllers may even become redundant and be completely omitted.
The inverters support the manufacturer-independent PLCopen function blocks for motion control. They can be freely programmed according to IEC 61131-3 in ‘Structured Text’ or ‘Instruction List’. This is said to make application development less complex and reduces the associated costs. Customer-specific drive-related functions can be implemented by means of the inverter PLC without an application-specific firmware and free from cost-intensive verification and validation.
