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News: Tech Spotlight
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The TSM14POE StepSERVO™ Integrated Motor is the first motion control solution from Applied Motion Products to make use of Power over Ethernet, also known as PoE.
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Applied Motion Products congratulates Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and their National Ignition Facility (NIF) on the record level of energy they fired earlier this year. NIF successfully fired a record 2.15 megajoules (MJ) of energy into its target chamber, a 10 percent improvement over the previous NIF record set in 2012. What’s more, this new record is 15 percent higher than what was originally envisioned possible during NIF’s design.
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Central to smart factory development, mobile robots navigate materials from one location to another, freeing human resources to focus on more complex and valuable tasks. While central software systems network fleets of mobile robots together, advanced AI supported by sophisticated software and componentry enable robots to communicate among themselves as well as automatically sense and react to the physical world of people and objects around them.
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Watch the video that compares equally sized motors – one open loop and one closed-loop. StepSERVO™ closed-loop integrated motors outperform traditional open loop step motors in many ways, including torque. Torque is important for today’s high-throughput production machinery that requires motors to operate reliably with high acceleration and deceleration rates.
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Applied Motion Products is pleased to offer a range of motors and drives that are UL recognized. With this recognition, customers can feel confident using these products in applications that require UL and CSA certification.
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This article is about J Series Servo Motors from Applied Motion Products and a newly introduced variant of the motor design that comes with a 9-pin feedback connector instead of the more familiar 15-pin feedback connector. The details below include how to identify the 9-pin connector, why we’ve introduced this variant, and how it affects the product line.
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In 2017 Applied Motion Products evolved the broad line of StepSERVO™ Integrated Motors, ranging in size from the miniature NEMA 11 to the largest NEMA 34, to include improved EtherNet/IP and CANopen communications. These already successful products now feature greater industrial networking power, enabling them for even more advanced automation projects, and further empowering you to Make it Move.
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Connect to Your Network Faster
SS-EC StepSERVO Drives and Motors are powerful and functional motion control axes. With support for CiA 402 operating modes and integrated EtherCAT® networking, these drives and motors are ready to be integrated into new and existing EtherCAT networks. The combination of StepSERVO closed loop step motor technology and EtherCAT networking create a robust motion control solution for multi-axis positioning, velocity, and torque control applications.
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Most conveyor applications run at either a constant or variable speed, and therefore require only velocity control from the conveyor’s main drive motor. But positioning conveyors – like edge-belt conveyors for PC board assembly and positioning conveyors used in automated checkweighers – need to do more than just velocity control. The main drive motor needs to start and stop the conveyor with precision. The level of precision can range from moderate to fairly high. This level of positioning control requires more than your average DC or AC motor used for velocity control. Step motors and servo motors are the best solutions because of their precise positioning capabilities. This article highlights the three most popular methods for controlling step and servo motors used in positioning conveyors.
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Users of step motors will praise their simplicity, excellent positioning skills, and economy. They may also lament certain characteristics of step motor performance. For example, traditional step motor systems run open loop which means the drive electronics supply constant current to the motor whether there is a demand for torque from the load or not. What happens to that current when there’s no torque demand? It is lost as heat.
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We are very pleased to announce the introduction of our most compact stepper drive to date. The STR3 miniature advanced stepper drive offers many of the great features of our larger drives, but in an ultra-compact package designed for OEMs demanding high performance and a competitive price point.
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Basic step and direction drives for powering step motors abound in the marketplace, and it takes dedication to set our drives apart from the pack. We do this by developing innovative control solutions that make step motors perform better (faster, quieter, smoother, more accurate, and with more torque), without breaking the budget.
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Many industrial and commercial applications benefit from the performance improvements of StepSERVO™ closed loop stepper technology, but none may be so pronounced as the benefits achieved in 3D printing.
3D Platform® has been using Applied Motion’s traditional, open loop integrated step motors on their large format 3D printers for several years now. Beginning this year, 3D Platform is launching their next generation of 3D printers with new technology called SurePrint™.
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If you’re still new to StepSERVO™ technology it’s probably time you checked out some of the introductory resources available, like this white paper, this video, or this recorded webinar, all of which summarize the highlights of this incredible technology. The performance improvements of StepSERVO closed loop technology are very real. By upgrading your traditional step motor system with a StepSERVO closed loop stepper system you too can reap the benefits of closed loop performance, and do so without breaking the bank.
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Even though it's the smallest stepper drive in our line up, the STR2 stepper drive has some very big shoes to fill. It is the successor to the venerable 2035 drives, which was our very first standard drive offering and is still in production after 23 years! Fortunately for the STR2 it has an arsenal of performance benefits that allow it to outshine it's older brother.
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We're working with a linear actuator partner to develop a modular, single axis smart robot. This newly released SWM24 Modbus compatible, IP65 rated drive+motor is a perfect fit for such an application. Especially when combined with a touch panel HMI. Who knew step motor motion control could be so easy, yet powerful?
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Generally speaking, electricity and water are a bad mix. Precision electric motors should be keep clean and dry. But that's not practical in some applications, especially if the application is outdoors, like a cell phone tower, or involves processing fluids that can, on occasion escape, like in a brewery. Such applications are best suited for IP rated step motors. Since this is also an engineering blog, we strive for quantitative analysis. As luck would have it, there's a standard for everything, including ingress protection.
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Modbus is a simple communication protocol originally designed in 1979 and intended for use in Industrial Automation systems. The original flavor, Modbus/RTU, was built to utilize serial communications (RS-232 and RS-485 primarily), but it has since been extended to use Ethernet. The Ethernet variant is known as Modbus/TCP. While the core principles remain the same with TCP, the use of TCP/IP communications adds a bit of complexity so we will concentrate on RTU for the remainder of this post.
