Protection

Diagnostics for troubleshooting can help you avoid unnecessary downtime of your application and guide you through the troubleshooting. This is part of the LINAK^® I/O™ interface and is one of several options you can add to your actuator to harvest the benefits of smart linear movement.

Below you get a summary of the 3 steps of troubleshooting you can obtain with Diagnostics. These can all be configured in our supporting configurator Actuator Connect™.

Actuators with IC Integrated Controller™ from LINAK^® are flexible and can be adapted to special customer requirements and needs. Configure your actuator via the intuitive Actuator Connect™ configurator.

Download a free version of the latest Actuator Connect here.

- by setting a limit for how much current the actuator is allowed to use

By defining a new current limit, you ensure that the actuator automatically stops if it hits an obstacle or meets other resistance in the application, which is designed to help protect both the application and the actuator. Current limits can be set in both directions. These limits can be configured to specific application requirements - this is to ensure that increased power consumption at low temperatures is allowed.

For more specific needs, you can define up to 10 variable current limits in both directions. This is done by dividing the stroke length into intervals of 10% and for each interval you can set a unique current limit. This is especially sensible if you want to ensure that the actuator does not draw the same amount of current throughout the movement. This gives you full control of the actuator and a more advanced way of managing current limits.

- with ramp-up and ramp-down speed settings

LINAK offers soft start and soft stop of the actuator as an alternative to instant stop. With soft start and soft stop, the actuator slowly accelerates to full speed or slowly decelerates from full speed. You can choose to go with LINAK default settings or set your own ramp speed settings. This provides a smoother movement, thereby reducing strain on the application and significantly extending the service life of the actuator.

Traditionally, the actuators have used soft stop after the run signal has been manually removed (it continues to run). As an extended feature, you can now choose soft stop towards an end stop, which ensures that the actuator always slows down towards either the physical or virtual end stop.

- by adding a third digital input for conditional triggered operations

In some cases, there may be external factors that need to be in place before the actuator can run. You can use the third digital input as an external precondition to allow movement.

A signal runs directly through the actuator and verifies whether the conditions are established before it runs. This means that LINAK reduces the complexity of your PLC and in simple applications this could save you extra components.