The STSPIN250 single-chip 2.6A driver for brushed DC motors extends STMicroelectronics’ family of miniature, low-voltage, energy-efficient drivers for battery-powered portable and wearable applications. The driver integrates a full power-MOSFET bridge and fixed off-time PWM current controller in a tiny 3mm x 3mm package that saves space in portable equipment. The low on-resistance of the power stage (200mΩ […]
Servo Drives
Panel-mount brush servo drives work for centralized motion controls
The AxCent (Axes for Centralized control schemes) product platform brings the proven and powerful performance expected of ADVANCED Motion Controls, with improvements to the design architecture that utilize years of experience in the industry and the latest advancements in modern servo system design. As technology continues its shift from analog to digital, there is still strong demand for […]
What are typical drive-based safety functions?
Functional safety standards EN/IEC 62061 and EN/ISO 13849-1 ensure safety via electronic solutions, unlike traditional safety systems, which used electromechanical components to achieve safety. And while functional safety applies to a machine and its control system (not to individual components), the drive lies at the heart of the safety implementation. In fact, functional safety specifies that […]
What are functional safety standards for servo drives?
Safety is a serious concern for machine builders, system integrators, and end users. Not only do they have a responsibility to provide a safe production environment, they must also meet regulatory requirements for machine safety. And of course, all of this should occur with minimal impact on operational efficiency and productivity. Fortunately, functional safety features […]
What’s the difference between single-axis and multi-axis (rack or cabinet) controls?
By Craig Dahlquist • Application Engineer at Lenze Americas || As with most applications, the requirements of the application can determine what type of drive architecture is selected. The single-axis control means that the DC power supply is internal to each drive. The multi-axis control utilizes a central DC power supply that a number of axes share through the […]
How to use servo drives with asynchronous (induction) motors?
With high construction costs of rare earth permanent magnet synchronous servo motors, asynchronous (induction) motors are more acceptable, when possible. By Craig Dahlquist • Application Engineer at Lenze Americas One way to get servo control of an asynchronous motor (on 400 to 480 Vac supply voltage) is to use a conventional 230/400 or 230/460 Vac (delta/wye connection) […]
FAQ: What are PID gains and feed-forward gains?
Gain is the ratio of output to input—a measure of the amplification of the input signal. A common example is the volume button on a stereo. This button controls the ratio of the input signal (received from the radio station) to the output signal (how loud the sound is from your speakers). When the volume is […]
What is distributed architecture for servo drives?
Article updated August 2019 || Traditional servo-system architecture consists of a power supply, a motion controller, and servo drives all housed in one location that is typically a control cabinet located away from the machine. Then each motor connects to the control cabinet by two cables … one for power and one for feedback. This […]
What is a servo drive?
Updated August 2019 || Servo systems consist of four main components — a motor, a drive, a controller, and a feedback device … with the latter usually an encoder. The controller determines what the motor must do and then triggers the drive to send the necessary electrical energy to the motor to make the required […]
Realtime control SoCs let designers focus on industrial-drive differentiation
By Brian Fortman | DesignDRIVE Marketing Manager, C2000 Microcontrollers | Texas Instruments Many industrial inverter and servodrive manufacturers rely on field-programmable gate-array (FPGA) or ASIC technology to complete functions unsupported by commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) products such as 32-bit microcontrollers (MCUs). There are drawbacks to these technologies, though. Case in point: Adding FPGAs and ASICs to […]
