The Guidance Controllers are normally purchased with integrated motor drives, i.e. amplifiers. However, you may have a preference for an amplifier from another manufacturer or the Guidance Controller amplifiers may not be suitable for your application due to their power rating or for some other reason. In these cases, you can still get many of the benefits of the Guidance Controller by interfacing it to 3rd party amplifiers.
In order to interface to a 3rd party amplifier, the amplifier must be able to accept a +/- 10 VDC signal that represents the commanded torque, i.e. the drive must operate as a traditional analog input torque amplifier. In addition, the amplifier/motor must return an incremental encoder signal or one of the supported absolute encoder signals (required "Enhanced" Guidance Controller). The encoder feedback allows the controller to track the motor position and derive velocity and acceleration feedback information.
Even though the controller requires an incremental or selected absolute encoder, some amplifiers may be able to use a motor with an unsupported absolute encoder. This is possible become some amplifiers will convert the absolute encoder signal and output standard increment encoder A/B/Z signals.
Since the encoder setup utilized by the 3rd party amplifier option is the same as that of the integrated drives, the specifics of the encoder setup procedure will not be described in this document.
As a standard option, any of the Guidance Controllers can be equipped with the DAC's required for the 3rd party amplifier interface. The DACs come in either a group of 4 or a group of 6. For example, the basic Guidance 3400 when equipped with quad DAC's is sold as the G3404. This allows you to employ a combination of integrated drives and 3rd party amplifiers to control a robot. The controller is also available without any drives and either 4 DAC's (G0400) or 6 DAC's (G0600) for use entirely with 3rd party amplifiers.
In addition to the DAC and encoder interfaces, there are other signals that are required to ensure the proper operation of the system. These signals are as follows.
Also, certain amplifiers have special additional interface requirements. For example, the Yaskawa Sigma-2/3 amplifier provides absolute encoder position when the amplifier is first powered up. The absolute position data is transmitted through the encoder A/B/Z lines during power up, which then switch over into normal A/B/Z signals. These special interfacing requirements will be added to the Guidance Controllers as the need arises.