Yaskawa Electric Corporation has released the CPU-203F CPU unit for the MP3200 Series machine controller. Moreover, it supports MECHATROLINK-4 industrial network standard and achieves faster operation. In addition, the new unit controls multiple axes without an optional module. 

To date, Yaskawa Electric has already brought two CPU units for the MP32000 Series machine controller. They are the CPU-201 introduced in October 2011 and the CPU-202 released in August 2013. The MP3200 Series machine controller excels in high-speed and simultaneous control of multiple axes of servo drives.

Correspondingly, by offering these CPU units, the company met customers’ needs for faster equipment with higher functions. This allows them to improve productivity and reduce production cost in the manufacturing process, including semiconductor manufacturing and electronic components assembly. 

Executes Parallel Communication Processing

Recently, demands for a greater number of control axes and high-speed data communications, including peripheral equipment, have been increasing. This is in addition to demand for high-speed control performance. Yaskawa Electric released in May 2021 CPU-203 with enhanced program execution performance and is equipped with multiple gigabit Ethernet ports as standard. CPU-203 CPU unit adopts a high-speed multicore processor as well as four MECHATROLINK-Ⅲ communication processors. Thus, it is capable of parallel execution of MECHATROLINK-Ⅲ communications. 

In particular, CPU-203F supports MECHATROLINK-4 (100Mbps), which is a new generation industrial network. As a result, CPU-203F supports even faster communication speeds and achieves the control of multiple axes without an optional module. Combining CPU-203F and Yaskawa Electric’s Σ-X Series servo drive significantly enhances customers’ equipment performance. 

CPU-203F incorporates four MECHATROLINK-4 communication processors and executes parallel MECHATROLINK-4 communication processing. To accommodate the transmission cycle of 62.5μs, the number of control axes per transmission cycle increased, making it possible to control up to 256 axes without an optional module. 

It adopts a multicore high-speed processer, thereby optimizing processing of each core. As a result, execution processing performance of ladder program, a programming language for controlling programmable logic controller (PLC), has improved. 

The said CPU variant also has two ports and each of them can select information data processing (general-purpose Ethernet) and control data processing (EtherNet/IP).  Parallelizing the information and data processing enables high-speed communications. 

Suits Wide Range of Application

CPU-203 best suits semiconductor manufacturing equipment that pursues high speed and high response (molding equipment, die bonders). In addition, it also meets liquid crystal manufacturing equipment (scribers, seal dispensers), and electronic component assembly equipment (chip mounters, solder paste printers).

Furthermore, it is also suitable for metal working machines (servo press machines, winding machines, spring manufacturing machines) and industrial robots (parallel link, horizontal articulated and vertical articulated robots). 

The MP3000 Series comes in the MP3100 board-type machine controller, MP3200 integrated machine controller, and the MP3300 all-in-one machine controller.