Motors & Drives

Saica Packaging Ltd has achieved record-breaking productivity levels for the company's UK operations following a drives and controls upgrade by Optima Control Solutions Ltd (OCS) on a corrugating line at its Edinburgh plant.

With the new N-664 linear positioning stage, PI (Physik Instrumente) has succeeded in developing a further groundbreaking piezo positioning system of the reference class. A NEXACT® piezo linear drive replaces the usual stepper or DC servo motor in the N-664, thus making a position resolution of far less than a nanometer possible. Aligned to it is the new PIOne optical linear encoder with a resolution of 0.5 nm, which allows for repeatable incremental motions of 2 nm.

Fitting variable speed drives to motors is often put forward as a way of saving energy, and this idea appears to have influenced the wording of part of the European Ecodesign Directive. However, as Phil George of Eaton’s Electrical Sector explains, variable speed drives are not always the most energy efficient choice.

The PD-146-60-SE PANdrive™ from Trinamic is a full mechatronic solution, which includes a 60mm flange high torque motor, a motion controller/driver and an integrated high-resolution sensOstep™ encoder. The PANdrive™ is equipped with a high performance motion controller for high dynamic, high resolution and S-shaped acceleration ramps.

Following the recent acquisition of Origa by Parker, Micromech has been appointed the UK distributor for their entirely new generation of linear drives. This is Parker ORIGA's second generation of linear drives that gives design engineers ultimate flexibility. The well-known Origa cylinder is now a combined linear actuator, guidance and control package.

Nanotec presents its new SMCI36 motor controller. With dspDrive® and ClosedLoop, Nanotec focuses on the needs of engineers who are looking for quick, small and energy-efficient solutions for distributed applications. Demand is increasing for technologies as ClosedLoop and CANopen. ClosedLoop provides energy-efficient motor controlling, and with the field-oriented control expensive geared servomotor systems can be replaced with more favourably-priced stepper motors. This is particularly true for rotational speeds of up to 1,500 rpm or torques of up to 10 Nm. The CANopen bus standard enables rapid communication between the individual components of motion control solutions.

The ultraflat, high torque DPM-63S10 stepper motors with a step angle of 1.8° supports designers who require maximum torque and high positional accuracy combined with minimum overall height.

JVL is one of the leading companies in the field of integrated servo and stepper motors. For their medium and high power MAC motor’s, from 400 W to 3000 W, yet another expansion module has been added: The EtherCAT Industrial Ethernet module. To supplement the already existing modules like CANopen, Profibus, Devicenet, NanoPLC, BlueTooth and WLAN etc. was there a demand from the market to develop a new series of Industrial Ethernet modules starting with EtherCAT and EtherNet/IP. Later ProfiNet, Modbus TCP, Powerlink or Sercos III will be announced. One of the requests for this new module was that hardware to all protocols should be the same so customer at installation time could decide which protocol to use. Thereby can customer save money for stock and new Industrial Ethernet products could be launch very rapidly after approval of the industry. All modules are equipped with robust M12 connector to archive high IP protection and also internal switch technology with Ethernet IN and OUT

Phidgets Inc. released today the 1065 – PhidgetMotorControl 1-Motor that lets you control the direction, velocity and acceleration of one DC Motor. The motor is powered by an external power supply (9 to 28VDC).

Parker Hannifin, the global leader in motion control technologies, has broadened its range of frameless torque motors with the introduction of its new TK130 models. Building on the features of the existing TK range, the new, smaller models offer simplified mechanical design, precise motion and high dynamic performance, all in an extremely robust package.