PD-9000
Proportional & Servo Valve Development Platform

The PD-9000 Proportional & Servo Valve Development Platform is a series of pre-developed elements for creating specialty valves for pneumatic, hydraulic, and fluidic control applications.

Development of application-specific custom valves is time consuming, expensive, and fraught with technical uncertainties. Enfield Technologies' platform elements can be "mixed-and-matched" to launch product development projects with a head-start. This allows the customer and Enfield Technologies design teams to more quickly focus their development effort and investment on the requirements and special technical challenges of the primary application. This often allows for rapid development of an "alpha" product, or use of an existing version, as a proof-of-concept and baseline for developing specifications.

The benefits of the PD-9000 Platform are simple but critically important to engineers, product managers, and executive management:

• Speed-to-Market
• Proven Designs
• Reduced Project Risk
• Reduced Development Cost

Platform Description

With a defined but flexible architecture, the platform is used to create custom and semi-custom components for customers with unique application requirements. It is also used for several Enfield Technologies' standard and OEM products which results in new elements continuously being developed to expand the platform.

Enfield Technologies uses a "mechatronics" design approach where integrated mechanical and electronic systems are designed interactively. This approach has been expanded to include control theory and a core focus on the underpinning science – not just engineering. This approach is a key element of the PD-9000 Platform design.

Platform elements are conceptually similar to "object oriented" computer software programming or "core modules" for microprocessors. In this case, the objects include more than functional software code blocks or microprocessors surrounded by basic supporting circuitry. Mechanical, analog circuitry, communications, and other facets of a complete mechatronic device are included in the overall architecture. This architecture is described visually on the following page, and on subsequent pages there are examples of objects which we refer to as "elements" (to distinguish them from "objects" as used for software code and circuitry blocks).

Applications

Products created on the PD-9000 Platform can have very different outward appearances but share many identical elements within. This is a unique feature of the platform architecture. Every specialty application has unique functions and technical challenges, and the PD-9000 was designed to accommodate a wide variety of form factors and functional capabilities. Advanced applications engineering and product design may not be entirely eliminated, but it may be dramatically reduced to focus on incremental creation of function-specific elements within the architecture. And this makes projects much simpler and more manageable than ground-up designs.

Examples of applications and industry sectors include:

The specification chart in the PD-9000 Data Sheet shows a variety of applications and challenges the PD-9000 can address.

For greater detail related to the PD-9000 Platform's Platform Architecture, Technical Specifications, Platform Elements and Application Examples, please download the PD-9000 Data Sheet.