With the new 'ACOPOS M4', B&R is expanding its 'ACOPOS' drive family with a system designed for high control quality and energy efficiency. The servo controller is designed to enable machine builders to implement powerful axis concepts with less engineering effort. According to the company, the space required in the control cabinet for 4-axis modules can be reduced by up to 60 percent. According to B&R, the 'ACOPOS M4' is also one of the first servo controllers to be developed natively for the OPC UA FX open communication standard. Integration into the automation platform is intended to simplify commissioning, diagnostics and operation, while also making it easier to adapt to future machine architectures.

While the 'ACOPOS M4' is aimed at demanding motion applications and future automation architectures, the equally new 'ACOPOS X4' addresses applications with high power density and modular scalability. According to the manufacturer, the new motor control modules reduce the space required in the control cabinet by up to 30 percent. At the same time, they are intended to give machine builders greater freedom in the design of machines and control cabinets. For OEMs, this means more power in less space, less wiring work and easier expandability of machine concepts.

"OEMs, machine and plant manufacturers are now faced with the challenge of implementing a wide range of customer requirements flexibly, reliably and economically. With scalable drive solutions and intelligent vision systems, we help OEMs to consistently focus their machines on process reliability, quality and efficiency - and to offer their end customers clearly measurable added value," says Michael Humer, Sales Manager Austria at B&R.

B&R is also focusing on greater integration in industrial image processing. The new Color Camera for print mark detection combines high color accuracy with fast data processing and is designed to deliver reliable results even at full line speed. The background to this is the increasing complexity of modern printing materials: glossy, transparent or multi-colored surfaces make it difficult to reliably detect print marks. If these are not consistently recognized, waste and material consumption increase. The new vision solution is therefore designed to improve key production figures and support a "first-time-right" print result.

These developments show the extent to which motion, control and vision technologies are now converging. For machine builders, the integration of different systems is increasingly becoming a decisive competitive factor. B&R will demonstrate the role that the new solutions can play in practice at all about automation in Wels on May 20 and 21.