We had an enquiry from a customer building a servo motor for a functional-safety application. They needed absolute position feedback that could talk to a Siemens drive over DRIVE-CLiQ, but with a single cable running to the encoder instead of a separate bundle for power, signal, and temperature sensing.
This is not just a case of picking any absolute encoder off the shelf. Hengstler’s ACURO AD58DQ is a motor feedback encoder built for exactly this: it uses ACURO link, a single-cable interface, so position, temperature, and encoder data all run over the same connection instead of separate wiring. It gives absolute position with up to 24-bit resolution on a single turn and 12-bit over multiple turns, and it is available in a functional-safety version rated SIL2/PLd or SIL3/PLe, which matters if the drive system needs a certified safety rating rather than a standard feedback signal. It is rated for speeds up to 7,000 rpm and an operating temperature range of -20°C to +115°C, so it can sit directly on the motor shaft in a hot cabinet without extra cooling.
From our experience, before we quote this, we would normally check whether the application actually needs the safety-rated version or the standard one, the shaft coupling type on the motor, and which drive protocol the customer’s system expects, since ACURO link and DRIVE-CLiQ are wired differently even though they look similar on the datasheet. Hope this helps.
