The Rise of Servo Motion Control Systems

In today’s world of business, automation in operation is now the basis of efficiency and productivity. Hence, in order for a company to be on top of their competitors, it needs to utilize acquire methods and facilities. One of which is the use of servo motion control systems. With these mechanics, business operations will surely be seamless and easy while being able to boost cost efficiency at the same time. However, with the many similar products in the market nowadays, it can sometimes be very hard to choose between these products.

The mechanics of servo motion control system

When it comes to servo motion control system, there are a lot of machines to choose from. Some of them are classified as alternating current (AC) drives, direct current (DC) drives, brushless servo drives, low voltage drives, and a lot more. All of these mechanics are effective. However, in order for you to be able to fully optimize your usage of servo motion control systems, you need to identify which of these machines best suit your operations. For example, brushless servo drives can sometimes be better to use than other type of servo drives. But, in some cases, brushless servo drives may also not be that effective.

Where to find the best servo drives?

As mentioned earlier, there are a lot of companies who offer similar products such as servo drive. Knowing this, you have to be able to select the best provider so that you can fully utilize the products that you use.

When it comes to providing top of the line servo drives such as brushless servo drives, Servotronix is one of the most sought after company. Servotronix manufactures, develops, and markets standard and customized motion electronic products which mainly focus on digital servo drives. With this company, you can be assured of getting top of the line products all the time. In fact, being in the industry for many years, Servotronix is the most trusted company when it comes to providing top of the line servo motion control system.

What can I benefit from these motion control drives?

When being able to utilize them properly, servo motion control drives can bring about a lot of benefits to you company. Some of them include:

• 1.       Efficiency in work – since servo motion control systems do not need that much of attending, work labors can now focus on more important things (such as decision making). Through this, efficiency can be greatly boost since work loads are now distributed among employees accordingly.
• 2.       Lower cost of operation – servo motion control systems can also be your way to be able to lower your cost of operation. By not committing mistakes and too much social interaction among employees, servo motion control systems will greatly boost a company’s profits.
• 3.       Other benefits – aside from work and cost efficiency, servo drive systems will greatly boost your company’s accuracy in work, accuracy in operation, and increase in the company’s profit.

The Best Solutions for Power Utilities

Ever since the early times, power utilities have been proven to be very helpful to every people. Through them, people are able to use electricity to make life easier. However, with the ever changing needs of the people, power utilities sometimes find it hard to cope with their clients. Thus, in order to do so, they need utilize effective techniques such as top quality solutions.

Considering harmonic compensation

Aside from the demands of the clients, there are still a lot of factors that make it hard for power utilities to always perform at their best. For example, power utilities need to consider important factors such as harmonic compensation. Without proper consideration on harmonic compensation, it can be hard for both energy users and suppliers to have smooth and effective electrical equipment function.

Effective power utilities solutions

One of the many ways for power utilities to continuously provide excellent quality service is to acquire top of the line solutions. These effective solutions can greatly help power utilities to anticipate important factors such as harmonic compensation.

Where to find the best solution

Nowadays, there are a lot of companies who offer solutions for power utilities. In fact, you can search for these solutions over the internet. However, with the many similar products out in the market today, it can sometimes be difficult to choose between products.

The factors to consider in choosing the best power utilities solutions

In choosing for the best solutions for power utilities, you need to consider a lot of factors. To start with, you must check the quality of the product. It must be able to cater all of your needs when it comes to anticipating hindrances and effective operation. Second, you need consider the price of the product. See to it that the money you spend will compensate the quality of the product. At times, there are companies who offer excellent quality product at a lower cost. Remember to keep an eye on these providers. Third, check the credibility of the service provider. In doing so, you need to do a few researches. Know the history and the capabilities of your chosen provider. See to it that they are well experienced and are capable of providing excellent customer satisfaction.

Benefits of effective power utilities solutions

1.       Effective operation – with an effective solution at your disposal, you can be assured of effective operation. You no longer have to worry about the hindrances that you may face along the way since you can immediately forecast them and device solutions before they actually happen.

2.       Cost efficiency – with lesser errors and malfunctions coming to your company, you have save your company of expenses such as damages and replacement of equipments.

3.       Longer life for business – with your company being able to operate efficiently, you can be assured that it will have a longer and healthier life span.

Understanding Servo Drives

For those who do not know, servo drives are electronic amplifiers used to power-drive servomechanisms. In other words, servo drives work by accepting signals from a control system. After which, it then amplifies the signal and conveys the electric current to a servo monitor so that it would produce a motion that is relative to the given command signal. Usually, command signals represent a preferred velocity, although it can also be a desired position or torque. The servo motor’s definite status is reported back to servo drives through a sensor that is attached to it. Servo drives will then evaluate the actual status of the motor with the commanded motor status.

Contribution of servo drives to businesses

Servo drives and servo systems, as a whole, can be used in computer numerical control (CNC) machining, automation of factories, robotics, and many more. Because of this, when companies are equipped with this state of the art system, there will be significant benefits to the operations of the company. To start with, efficiency will greatly increase since operations are done in an automated manner. Second, servo drives are also cost-efficient. Thus, this kind of system can also help in lessening an industry’s cost of operations. Third, compared to the usual alternating current (AC) motors and direct current (DC) motors, servos are more accurate when it comes to commanded motions. This is because servo drives are built with motor feedback which also detects any unwanted motions. Furthermore, unlike the usual alternating current motors and direct current motors, servo drives have better life cycle.

Versatility and Flexibility through Servo Systems

Since servo systems function better than the typical AC and DC motors, companies that use servos are able to enjoy advantages like being versatile and flexible when it comes to their operations. This is because servos are considered to be the next-generation high performance drives. Servo systems are characterized by its highly innovated software and hardware designs that are capable of delivering better performance.

AC and DC Servo Drives

As mentioned earlier, typical alternating current drives and direct current drives are now things of the past. Through servo systems, industries can now enjoy the benefits of the new and improved ACservo drives and DC servo drives which are more accurate in translating commands, perform better, have better life cycles, and a lot more. Examples of the latest alternating current servo drives include CD Series 5 and PPB direct PWM products.

Servo Drives: Final Verdict

Indeed, through the innovation of servo drives, motor operations of industries are now brought to a new level. Through this system, industries can now enjoy benefits like better performance, cost-efficiency, operational efficiency, precise and accurate work and a lot more.

Helping Increase Safety with Computerized Motors

Car manufacturers and assembly lines have long relied on servo motors in order to increase productivity and consistency on the line. Now, these same AC servo motors are helping to increase safety levels both for the employees of the plants and for those who are driving the vehicles. Technicians have realized the increased parameter options allows for more control over the finished product. This means less variation so that the pieces fit together in a way making them more stable than ever before and increasing the overall safety of the vehicle.

The AC servo motors that control the line help prevent overheating. This type of condition can cause fires, meltdowns and other dangerous situations for those who are monitoring the line. By using a mechanism that makes adjustments immediately, like a servo, the problem never has a chance to develop. It takes much less time to make a correction from the beginning than undoing a problem scenario has blown out of control. Think of it along the lines of laying a drop cloth down when you are painting or trying to clean up the paint off the ground after you are done. One is a simple clean up job and the other is a protracted process.

For the output of the product, because a servo motor can monitor things so closely there are fewer problems with the end product. When bolts and pieces do not meet up exactly, vibrations and other processes can cause things to wiggle loose. This factor often results in tires falling off, seat belts failing, pieces of the engine getting knocked out or other disastrous scenarios. By ensuring everything is exactly uniform, there is less chance of this type of problem. Basically it was the next logical step in the development of motorized vehicle development and the assembly line. The companies had maxed out what could be done with just humans and found a way to utilize the computerized systems in order to increase safety and productivity at the same time. Helping to make life safer is a great side benefit of computerized advances.

AC Servo Drives – The Present Industrial Requirement

Servo drives are specially made electronic amplifier that is used to boost or run electric servo mechanisms. All the feedback signals that come from the servo mechanisms are actually monitored by the servo drives. A servo drive continuously adjusts even the smallest deviation from the normal behavior.

It should be known that the main function of a servo drive is to receive the command signals from the control system and then amplify it so as to transmit the electric current to the servo motor. This is done to produce motion that is proportional to command signal. In general, the command signal signifies a preferred velocity but it can also signify a desired torque if and when required. 

The servo drive gets the feedback of the actual status of servo motor control from the servo motor’s attached sensor. The actual status of the motor is then compared with the commanded motor status by the servo drive. The servo drive alters the voltage frequency of the motor in order to correct any small deviation from the desired commanded status. 

The servo motor control rotates at a speed which closely matches the velocity signal that is being received from the control system by the servo drive. There are several parameters like derivative gain, proportional gain and feedback requires proper adjustment so as to achieve the desired performance. This process of adjusting of the parameters is known as performance tuning.   
     

With the advancement in the technology of the microprocessor units there has been a constant growth of cost effective solution and development of a permanent magnet manufacturing technology for the servo motors. There has been a great improvement in the technological development of the high performance and high power semi conductor power devices. Thus, AC servo drives, AC servo motor has now become the basic technology for achieving automation control system in the present industrial scenario. 

AC servo drivers bring in the newest high speed DSP in order to meet the varied requirements of your high speed and high precision control system. The latest AC servo drives have a lot better dynamic feature and stability that the convention PI controls systems of yester years.  

Today’s AC Servo drives includes analogue apparatus within the control loop of a servo motor that helps to minimize the energy consumption and ensures maximum output. They assist in changing frequency of the AC voltage which is received by the motor with the use of electronic devices.

Functions of motion control

Motion control can be said as one of the sub categories in the field of automation. When we work with machines in the field of automation we need to control a lot of parameters of the pump in order to get the desired results so the motion control can be done with the connection of some kind of pump in the motor which can also be a servo. Motion control is a simple thing when we work with simple machines. These are also used in the robotics and the CNC systems were the operation of the same thing is very complex. This is because of the kind of machines involved in both the processes. When we talk about the packaging industries and the textile industries and the assembly industries we understand how wide the scope of the same thing is. The motion control systems are gaining importance today.

The function of the motion control is vast and is not limited. Hence most of the people want to go with the motion control of the machines in order to be satisfied with the result it gives. The first and the most important and the well known function are the control of velocity by the motion control. There after it also can control the velocity and the pressure in other words. So if the motion control is attached to the machines getting the desired results is very important. These are particularly effective when the experiments are carried on. The reason is that one cannot have several different types of machines at the very initial stage. The motion control mechanism proves to be very effective and non expensive way to control motion of the machines in order to get the results as desired. The motion control is also used to control the position also. The position control of the motion control is mainly used in the control of the profiles like the trajectory ones.

The overview of the motion control is very complex. But it’s not very difficult to operate. People find these options very convenient and hence opt for the motion control when they have to control the output. If the input signal is good then the output is the best one can accept and this is the reason that people go for the motion control. The functions are vast and in many kinds of industry too. So the people can get one as per the desire of the people as such.

Servo Amplifier

A servo amplifier is a part of the closed loop servo control drive system is designed to primarily control the performance of a mechanism. Basically they are four-quadrant, power amplifiers with regenerative features and equipped to supply power according to the control voltage to the overall motor. These servo amplifiers can supply energy to the load, as well as absorb energy from the load. They are also designed to convert the kinetic energy of the combined motor load into electrical energy while the load is decelerating.

The output of a servo amplifier is an analogue circuit. The circuit enables the current and voltage of the motor to be adjusted to control position, torque and velocity. The feedback and comparator stages though can have a mixture of analog and digital devices.

Few ideal characteristics that are desired in a servo amplifier are as follows:

• Constant Velocity – ability to maintain the commanded velocity. Tachometers are used to record the aberrations between the commanded and actual motor speed.

·         Infinite Acceleration – an ideal amplifier must be able to provide infinite acceleration which can be observed by abruptly starting and stopping the motor.

·         Linear response – the amplifier need to respond proportionally to the changes in the velocity input command.

·         Hold Position – the amplifier should drive the motor in such a way that the latter holds its position irrespective of any external force or disturbance.

·         Overload protection – a low resistance circuit should be there to protect the amplifier from excessive current.

There are a host of servo amplifiers in the market but one should be careful while choosing an amplifier. The compatibility of the servo amplifier with its servo is to be ensured. Some notable types of servo amplifiers are as follows:

• Push Pull amplifiers – one of the earliest designs of amplifiers designed primarily for two transistors to get switched on/off to share the current load for the motor.
• Chopper amplifier – another primitive DC-motor based amplifier that finds limited usage today.
• L Type (Linear Motion) Servo Amplifier – it is fitted with linear positioning function you can basically construct a linear positioning system using such amplifiers as a ball screw or rack & pinion.
• Digital Amplifier – it is usually used for higher machine performance as it promises improved reliability and repeatability through digital technology.
• R Type (Rotation) Servo Amplifier – it provides an additional rotation angle indexing function. Rotation angle index system can be constructed using this amplifier.
• DC servo amplifier – both brush and brushless amplifiers can be found in simple DC motors

Brushless Servo Drives

Brushless servo drives are automatic instruments that monitor the performance of any mechanism based on the continuous feedback that it receives. Basically, it is a closed loop mechanism that sends rectification signals if the performance of the machine / instrument is deviating from the commanded data. Now, the instrument that really monitors the performance is called the servo drive. It is just an electronic amplifier that gets linked to a servo mechanism to monitor its performance. Servo drives can be brushed or brushless. While brushed motors provide exchange via physical contacts, brushless motors provide electronic exchange without physical contact, with the help of sinusoidal or the trapezoidal drives. These trapezoidal drives can energize two motor windings simultaneously before proceeding to the next pair of windings. Sinusoidal servo drives, on the other hand, can provide do this to three motor windings simultaneously with the sinusoidal signals.

Brushless motors work quite like AC motors where the rotor movement is caused by a dynamic magnet field. Brushless motors are known to have predicable linear characteristics. Brushless servo drives are AC or DC types. It is basically the way the motor is powered gives it the name AC or DC.

Read more about ac servo drives.

Torque developed by brushless servo drives depends on the control technology used. Type of control is determined by the feedback scheme exercised. DC motors use Hall sensors for feedback, whereas AC motors use resolver or encoder for feedback. Speed accuracy is very high in fact with the more popular brushless drive, almost close to 0%. This is due to the presence of a digital encoder and the drive controller regulation of position. High torque to inertia ratios provides high acceleration and deceleration rates with dynamic response.  Controller bandwidth is almost 8 times higher than the Brush DC drive. The Brushless DC motors have good thermal characteristics too. Motor efficiencies range anywhere around 90-96 % and controller efficiency around 97% giving overall efficiencies far superior than brush DC systems.

The benefits of brushless servo drives are:

• Very precise average speed control over a very wide speed range
• High dynamic response ensuring precise instantaneous speed control
• Constant power factor meaning lowest possible input current
• Smaller in size than the brush type
• No regular motor maintenance is needed
• Feedback device (encoder) is fitted internally and thereby less subject to errors
• Higher overall efficiency

Brushless servo drives find their usage in CNC machines, blowmolding and a host of other industrial applications -

Understanding Motion Control Drives

Motion control is a term that describes a range of applications that involve movement in specific routes designed to precision performance. Earlier motion control applications require only an object to be moved from one place to another without paying too much heed to speed or change of motion. On the other hand, there are machine tool applications which require the exact coordination of all aspects of motion, including a high degree of synchronization for multiple simultaneous movements.

Motion control drives finds heavy usage in the robotics industry. Motion control drives are known to monitor the motion performance of the mechanism. The feedback and the subsequent rectification, if needed, makes it ideally placed to be used in the robotics field. These drives are connected to motors that can be AC or DC. Further categorization can be made of DC brushed, DC brushless, AC Induction, AC synchronization and Stepper.

The motor amplifier or servo drive is designed to takes commands from the motion controller. These signals are incorporated in the analogue version where the voltage with low current is converted to high current signals in order to drive the motor. Motor drives come in many various types and makes and are fitted when matched to a specific motor they need to run. Along with matching the motor technology, the drive needs to ensure a balance of voltage, a continuous current and the balanced correct peak current.

The feedback of the mechanism’s performance can be taken of different parameters like back EMF, current, velocity, acceleration, position and many more. It’s because the control of these parameters will ensure the overall control of the motion of the object. Some of the sources for these feedbacks are:

• Hall effect sensors
• Encoder
• Potentiometer
• Tachometer
• Acceleration specific sensor

A motion control drive’s range of applications is far more specialized than any other manufacturing applications. Motion control drives must be capable of:

• Zero-speed holding torque
• Quick start/stop cycles
• Repeatable velocity and torque profiles
• High accelerating torque
• Synchronization
• Precise speed control
• Positioning capabilities

Motion control can operate two levels – the linear or the rotational axis. A linear axis application like a vehicle in motion has a pre-defined traversing range with predefined end stops. The rotational axis has a vast and almost never-ending traversing range when applied. A rotary table on the other hand travels a pre-defined yet short distance. They have a selected path or direction for moving point to point.