25 YEARS IN THE DC DRIVES BUSINESS AND STILL GROWING

To celebrate this achievement, Sprint Electric is showing its wide range of variable speed drives at SPS/IPC/Drives, the international trade fair for electric automation, systems and components, which takes place from 27 to 29 November in Nuremburg, Germany. 

Sprint Electric started from humble beginnings in 1987 with a range of single phase DC drives up to 48A. Even though the company still produces that range, it has been involved in many significant developments in the world of DC drives and now has a wide range of analogue singlephase and three-phase, twoquadrant and four-quadrant drives on offer. There are also classleading digital two-quadrant and four-quadrant drives up to 2250A with AC supply voltages up to 690V. Recent innovations have come in the form of a digital controller for retrofitting obsolete drives on slip ring motors, and a new range of high power field controllers.

Gary Keen, Sprint Electric’s sales director says, "The DC drives market still represents a huge potential for growth, with research forecasts predicting it to increase 7% by 2015, to $470 million. In the face of reduced competition, this is an opportunity not to be missed.” Whether in retrofits or original equipment, DC drives from Sprint Electric are being used in many different applications all over the world including metal processing, the pulp and paper industry, rubber and plastic processing, lifting equipment, food processing, leisure industries and many more.

Sprint Electric has an export share of approximately 80% - and for its outstanding success in international trade, the company won the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in 2009, one of the most prestigious business awards in the UK.

ETHERNET-BASED AUTOMATION FOR DC DRIVES AND SYSTEMS – DRIVE.WEB

Sprint Electric’s return to the SPS show in Nuremberg follows its launch at last year’s show of a new version of drive.web, its Ethernetbased distributed control system for DC drives. Graphical configuration tools provide diagnostics and configurability of all drives on the network, either locally or remotely via the Internet. The graphical tools allow the full configuration of the drives, provide service diagnostics, full documentation and an operator interface for local control, all without the need for a PLC or supervisory computer.

The drive.web hardware consists of an Ethernet port and processor that takes information dynamically from the drive and makes it available over the Ethernet network. Additional hardware includes interfaces to AC drives and remote I/O modules that provide increased access to the network for other control elements. The Java configuration software will run on PCs, Macs and Linux computers.

The system is demonstrated through an interactive iPad demo. It is possible to control a DC motor remotely using an iPad and watch it live via webcam. It is possible to stop, start, and change speed and direction of the DC motor and see the changes happen instantly.

The Sprint Electric digital range of drives type PLX can become drive.web enabled by simply adding an easy to fit option board. Other drives, even simple analogue ones, can take advantage of the technology by using a separate standalone DIN rail mounted drive.web module.