Installation manual

www.baldormotion.com
4-22 Input / Output MN1933
4.6 CAN
The CAN bus is a serial based network originally developed for automotive applications, but
now used for a wide range of industrial applications. It offers low-cost serial communications
with very high reliability in an industrial environment; the probability of an undetected error is
4.7x10
-11
. It is optimized for the transmission of small data packets and therefore offers fast
update of I/O devices (peripheral devices) connected to the bus.
The CAN protocol only defines the physical attributes of the network, i.e. the electrical,
mechanical, functional and procedural parameters of the physical connection between
devices. The higher level network functionality is defined by a number of standards and
proprietary protocols; CANopen is one of the most used standards for machine control within
industries such as printing and packaging machines.
In addition to supporting CANopen, Baldor have developed a proprietary protocol called Baldor
CAN. Both protocols are supported by NextMove PCI-2, but both cannot be supported at the
same time. This is because NextMove PCI-2 only has a single hardware CAN channel.
Separate firmware builds are available to support each of the protocols.
To determine which firmware is currently installed, start Mint WorkBench and connect to the
NextMove PCI-2 (see section 5). At the bottom of the Mint WorkBench window, the status bar
will show the name of the controller, followed by ‘CANopen’ or ‘Baldor CAN’. If the correct
option is not shown, it will be necessary to download alternative firmware by using the Install
System File and/or Download Firmware menu items in Mint WorkBench. The firmware file can
be found on the Baldor Motion Toolkit CD supplied with your product, or downloaded from
www.baldormotion.com. See the Mint help file for details about downloading firmware.