Rexroth, Panasonic to jointly develop servo drive components

By Control Engineering Staff June 27, 2002

Hoffman Estates, Ill.— Bosch Rexroth AG (Lohr, Germany) and Panasonic Motor Co. (Osaka, Japan) recently agreed to jointly develop electrical servo drive components. The two firms are working together to develop and produce ac servo drive products, focusing on open control communications, ergonomic product design and innovative construction. Panasonic is a division of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. Bosch Rexroth is a subsidiary of Robert Bosch GmbH.

“This agreement is a significant advance for the open control and drives market, since users will be able to select products from an ever-increasing number of suppliers,” said Pekka Paasivaara, gm of Bosch Rexroth’s Electric Drives and Controls division.

Takao Funatsu, Panasonic’s board chairman, added that, “I am delighted with this agreement, which combines Panasonic’s product know-how with Rexroth’s system competence in controls and drives.”

Specializing in motion control, Rexroth had marketed its open drive and control systems under the Indramat name until 2001. Presently, Rexroth’s flexible controls and intelligent drives serve five key markets: high-productivity machine tools; printing and paper converting machines; packaging and food processing machines; general automation; and automotive mounting, handling and body assembly. Rexroth controls are used in over 90 automotive plants, more than a 1,000 printing machines, and several thousand packaging machines.

Panasonic is a leading global producer of electrical servo drives in the low and medium power range. The company reports that it produces more than 250,000 servo drives annually.

Control Engineering Daily News Desk

Jim Montague, news editor

jmontague@reedbusiness.com