One of the things that sets us apart from our competitors is our willingness to make modified and custom servo drives and other products. We’ve been making custom servo amplifiers nearly since the beginning. Today, make up about one third of our business. Modified products make up another third.
While developing a custom servo drive for a customer, we work closely with them to give them a servo solution that does everything they need. This can include creating drives that have different connectors, shape, number of axes, and other features than our usual product offering.
Modified Servo Solution Options
ADVANCED Motion Controls’ offering of off-the-shelf products encompasses a wide range of power, performance, and design considerations. However, sometimes a few minor adjustments to a standard product can be beneficial to make things just right for a specific application without the need to invest in a fully-custom solution. A modified solution can quickly be realized and greatly increase machine performance. Best of all, we’ll do it for you!
For years, ADVANCED Motion Controls has happily produced and sold modified versions of our off-the-shelf servo drive products. In fact, modified servo drives make up approximately a third of our business. Whether it’s a tweak to the drive’s loop tuning or a the customer’s logo silkscreen printed on the cover, small modifications guarantee everyone gets a solution that is specifically tailored to them.
With simple modifications, the cost per unit can be near parity with standard products. As quantities go up, the difference will be less. Also, some options are available that may actually make the modified design cost less than the standard. For example, some customers like their units without the servo drive cover, which reduces the material cost.
Examples of Modified Products and Options
Tuning to a Specific Machine
Gain Adjustments
Current Limits and Voltage Limits
Temperature, Shock, and IP Considerations
Conformal Coating
Silkscreen Branding
Inverted Inhibit Logic
Quick disconnect, and many more!
Custom Servo Solution Options
ADVANCED Motion Controls has a broad servo drive offering and the ability to sell products in a modified form, but some motion control applications need something much different from the off-the-shelf models we offer. Thankfully, ADVANCED Motion Controls has the capability to promptly develop and deliver specified products for OEMs with volume requests.
It can start with a crazy idea, feature creep or near impossible specifications, but sometimes you just have to start over from scratch. Starting with a fresh design affords endless possibilities allowing the designer to expand capabilities beyond servo drive functions including full integration of peripheral components.
Non-Conventional Shape
Rather than try to fit a square peg into a round hole, why not find the peg that fits? Some motion control applications can be very limited on space for electronics, which means there might not be room for a standard servo drive. This is where a custom servo drive can be essential. We have delivered all shapes of custom drives including round ones that were integrated onto the backs of motors.
It's not always a matter of changing a rectangle into a circle; Maybe you just need to reduce the width and can sacrifice a little length, or reduce the footprint and sacrifice height.
Multiple Axes
Individual servo drives are typically used to drive one motor and one motor only. However, many applications have multiple motors working together. Rather than using multiple servo drives, you can get a custom multi-axis servo drive that can control more than one motor at once.
Multi-axis designs are smaller than the sum of their parts because they reduce redundant functions and components and take advantage of board layout.
Integrated Drives and Controls
We pride ourselves on manufacturing servo drives and controls, but how about both at once? Instead of using wires and cables to connect servo drives to a controller, drives and controls can be put together and packaged as a single unit.
Integrated solutions greatly simplify supply management, reduce assembly time, save space, and increase reliability. In addition, like a multi-axis servo drive, this can consolidate control of multiple servo axes to a single unit.
Specialized Network Options
At present, ADVANCED Motion Controls already has standard products available that support EtherCAT, CANopen, Ethernet/IP, Ethernet TCP, Ethernet POWERLINK, Modbus RTU/TCP, and RS-485/232. Any of these networks can be applied to a custom product. However, we have the technology and experience to create custom drives for more networks such as Profinet RT, Profinet IRT, Profibus, and SERCOS III. These customs can even pave the way for expanding our standard network offering.
Environmental Considerations
While we have an Extended Environment drive line, sometimes you need something special. All of our extended environment features and modifications can be applied to custom products, sometimes to an even greater extent. For example, we've made custom servo drives that can operate safely in ambient temperatures higher than 100°C and at crushing depths 6000 m below the surface of the ocean. These exceed the capabilities of our standard extended environment products.
Unique Capabilities
You need a drive with more power than our standard offering? Custom. You need a drive with more I/O ports than usual? Custom. You need a drive with special safety features? Custom. You need a drive that shares it's frame with the device? Custom. Want a magnetic encoder or other contactless feedback? Custom.
If you can imagine it, we can probably make it. At ADVANCED Motion Controls, we believe that everything is possible.
Examples
We don't just talk the talk, we walk the walk. We've manufactured hundreds of custom and modified servo drive models over the years. Here we have just a small handful of them for you to check out.
High Pressure Servo Drive
This servo drive was used to control an underwater camera traveling 6000m deep in the ocean. It was based on one of our standard solutions, but with a few key modifications that allowed it to work in this application.
Designed to mount on end of a motor
Used alternate capacitors and other components that would not be crushed under intense pressure
Custom baseplate
Incorporated a rotary magnetic module to replace the traditional Hall sensors and encoder feedback
Configured the controls for the drive to operate in velocity mode with the host controller closing the position loop
Two-Axis Servo Drive
Two of these drives were used to simultaneously control treads and elbow joints in a military remotely operated vehicle. Each drive was built to control one elbow joint and one tread, rather than having one two-axis drive for the treads and one two-axis drive for the two elbow joints. This way, the number of unique parts was reduced, making replacements easy.
No switches or potentiometers
Duty cycle mode operation
Axis #1: 30A peak, 24A continuous
Axis #2: 30A peak, 20A continuous
Custom operating voltage
Specified peak current duration
Specified I/O connectors
Specified motor and main power connectors
Conformal coating
Baseplate integrated as control box cover
Two-Axis Servo Drive
Baseplate shaped to match custom mount
Dynamic braking relays hold motors while machine is shut down
Specified connectors
Built in inductance for motor compatibility
Additional bus capacitance per customer spec
+/-3V command range
Special access to tuning values
Built within size restrictions
RTV applied to components for shock/vibration
Conformal coating
Custom label
Delivered less than 2 months after receipt of specification
MIL spec connector maintains an IP67 seal between the inside and outside while allowing communication and power to the drive
Expanded temperature range
Conformal coating
USB interface for communication and command over the customer's existing communication hardware
High powered DC/DC converter specified by the customer
Making it Happen
"The Technical Support Person, Brian Fabian, is fantastic, one of the best I've worked with."
- Thomas P
Is a Custom Worth it?
Is it always worth it to seek out a custom solution, especially if there's a way to make a standard product work? All customs are different, so we have to treat each case individually. However, we can still provide some general guidance.
For customs where there is increased complexity it’s best to add up the cost of the individual components for comparison. A multi-axis solution for example can be a combination of two drives and a mounting card. If you added up the price of the individual components it is very likely that the custom 2-axis drive would cost less (Even including engineering costs and NRE).
Even in cases where there is very low volume, you can still come out ahead if you consider the cost of alternative solutions. For example, how much does it really cost to design your own servo drive? We’ve seen customers struggle for years trying to design their own solution and end up with unsatisfactory results and poor reliability. But when given the chance to step in, we have proven ourselves time and again by delivering excellent solutions in just a few weeks or months making our customers very happy.
How do We Make it Happen?
So how is it that we can deliver the best solutions so quickly? The simple answer is – it’s just who we are. Our skill-set for designing servo drives is practiced and honed in daily, and it shows in our time-to-delivery, quality, performance and pricing. We truly do believe everything is possible at ADVANCED Motion Controls, and our custom products make that true.
If you believe a custom product could be the answer for your motion control solution, please Contact Us and we’ll lend our expertise.
Our Strengths
On-site engineering and manufacturing
Close cooperation between our engineering and applications departments and the customer
Built on the same equipment and by the same people as standard products
A custom design has many advantages when it comes to cost and lead times
Tailored to meet the exact form, fit, and function requirements
Cost savings due to reduction of components or features not needed for the specific system
ADVANCED Motion Controls' experience and in-house facilities will produce reliable custom solutions faster than any other suppliers on the market
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