Archive: August 2016

Today in the lab we’re looking at the benefits in efficiency that can be achieved by upgrading traditional, open loop step motor systems with closed loop step motor systems. Power consumption has a negative effect on revenue when energy bills run high. Today’s demonstration will show how you can save energy by utilizing StepSERVO closed loop integrated motors.

To demonstrate this, we have two motors of equal size. One motor will be controlled open loop by a basic microstepping drive. The other motor is a StepSERVO closed loop integrated motor, which has a drive, encoder, and controller integrated into a single package.

To help us with this demonstration, Matt’s going to operate the dynamometer.

First we’ll run the open loop motor on the dyno at a fixed speed of 10 rev/sec, and we’ll monitor power consumption with a simple meter connected to the AC line side of the power supply. At a load of 50 oz-in we see that the open loop system draws 0.73 amps and consumes about 87.2 watts of power.

Now we put the StepSERVO closed loop motor on the dyno. At the same speed of 10 rev/sec and load of 50 oz-in we see that the StepSERVO closed loop system draws 0.42 amps and consumes about 50.0 watts of power. That’s more than a 40% reduction in power consumption with the closed loop StepSERVO, which is doing the exact same amount of work as the open loop step motor.

What you’ve seen here is important for any customer concerned with increasing motor efficiency and decreasing power consumption. Thanks for watching and see you next time, inside the lab at Applied Motion Products.