NORD DRIVESYSTEMS intelligent drives

German company NORD DRIVESYSTEMS offers solutions for making real-time drive data available in a cloud environment. Here, all drive axes can be monitored from anywhere in the world via an internet connection.

Its intelligent drives are claimed to have been thoroughly tested and proven to perform reliably in a drive network, utilising standard interfaces and components.

AC vector drives and motor starters controlled via Profinet simultaneously transmit live status data in UDP packets, on the same bus line, without affecting regular control communication.

These cloud-enabled drives send data about their power consumption, speed and voltage, as well as their status. Tunnelled through a Siemens PLC, all of this information is transmitted to an IoT gateway and on into the cloud. Status data can then be analysed for energy profiling, asset management and remote maintenance purposes. Any overload or error states can be visualised.

In addition, the intelligent drives can also transmit additional application data into the cloud at any time — for instance, data of connected sensors and actuators. Moreover, other parameters can be derived from available status data, notably current oil temperatures. NORD has successfully validated this in initial tests and claims such data allows for conclusions about lubricant ageing that can be used for predictive maintenance.