Facing a ceaseless stream of multi-ton loads, drives in portside gantry cranes are under constant pressure to perform. Users need and demand reliable solutions that deliver excellent dynamics, positioning precision, and cost efficiency in equal measure. Hoist and trolley drives used in shipyard or container terminal cranes therefore require specialized mechanics and electronics suitable for this demanding application area.

SMIL has chosen Nord Drivesystems geared motors for the new conveyor system at the Gardanne quarry operated by Durance Granulats, in the south of France. This will increase capacity by 25%, taking the weight of ore processed from 400,000 tonnes to 500,000 tonnes a year.

Nord Drivesystems provides drives and gears for the packaging, palleting and transport technology systems designed and installed by BMS Maschinenfabrik in the new factory of the Hacklberger Beverage company. Decentralised capability, high positioning accuracy and low energy consumption of the Nord Drivesystems solutions are key success factors for this new installation producing up to 36 000 bottles per hour.

NORD Drivesystems provides a technology box for integrating motor-mounted SK 200E inverters into EtherCAT networks and the Beckhoff control technology environment. The Ethernet-based fieldbus offers significant benefits particularly for distributed networks such as conveyor systems. The new EtherCAT box from NORD cost-efficiently connects a large number of inverters to a single bus line, since there is no need for repeaters or additional bus master interfaces.

More than 1000 Nord Drivesystems geared motors with decentralised inverters have been installed in Chronopost’s main European hub, to the south of Paris. They are a crucial component in the sorting centre which handles an average of 170,000 parcels a day, each needing to be identified and sent to the correct loading bay in less than 3 minutes.

With its broad spectrum of gearmotors and frequency inverters, NORD Drivesystems offers a large selection of drive components for the automotive production sector, where Profibus and Profinet are the industry standard for communication tasks. The Profibus versions of the SK 200E family of decentralised frequency inverters from NORD Drivesystems are now certified compliant with the Profibus DP standard. The SK 200E frequency inverter is mounted directly on the drive in place of the terminal box, with the combination of frequency inverter and gearmotor forming a complete drive unit.

NORD geared motors have been chosen to position and securely hold solar modules of photovoltaic plants in Northern Germany. Energy efficiency was a key success factor for Nord solution, as the solar panels permanently tracks and follow the sun over the course of the day.

NORD DRIVESYSTEMS offers the complete range of economical and safe drive technologies for all automation tasks in the renewable energies sector. Applications include biomass, solar, and wind power plants. To answer these industries’ specific questions, a new microsite at http://energy.nord.com now provides solutions and an overview of the product portfolio which includes high-performance decentral frequency inverters and drives with protection ratings to IP66.

NORD DRIVESYSTEMS manufactures high-performance, economic drive technology for the food industry. To address sector-specific automation requirements, a new microsite presenting solutions and products has been established at http://food.nord.com.

New variants in three additional sizes from 7 to 9 complement the existing NORDBLOC.1 program.