Digital Applications of AC Motor Controls

The rapidly developing field of adjustable frequency control of ac motors represents more than just the evolution of a technology for solving old problems in a different way. More importantly, it is bringing into being a power output element capable of doing new jobs and of dramatically simplifying many jobs that have been done in the past with considerable complexity and hardware and not very well. A key to its promise lies in its basic nature which is inherently more digital than analog and therefore capable of being readily integrated into digital systems and of interfacing easily with those sources of digital signals such as thumbwheels, digital tachometers, encoders, tape readers, and process computers which abound in modem industrial systems.