Unique Shapes
The rectangular box is the traditional shape of a servo drive. However, sometimes off-the-shelf drives don’t physically fit into the application because they are too long or too wide.
Luckily, drive design is not constrained by this convention, and drives can be supplied in almost any size or shape required to meet dimensional requirements, fit in space-limited enclosures, or lock into unusually-shaped spaces. Adapting the servo drive dimensions to the system requirements provides a flexible and elegant solution for system designers
Particularly popular are round-shaped drives that integrate within the motor housing. ADVANCED Motion Controls has developed and sold several different custom servo drives of this style.
Size and Power
The size of a servo drive more often than not correlates with its power capacity. Higher power servo drives are generally larger, lower power drives are usually smaller. As technology improves, power density can be increased safely in newer servo drive models, but certain limitations remain. With the heat generated from the electricity running through the components, its simply a matter of thermodynamics and heat transfer. If a drive gets to hot, it can no longer function safely.
Drive size is becoming an increasingly important aspect of motion control, especially in robotics. With robots becoming more intricate, the demand for smaller servo drives with higher power densities is growing. So every year, motion control companies try to push the limits of how much power they can run through a small drive. This was the motivation behind ADVANCED Motion Controls’ FlexPro™ drive family, composed of micro-sized digital drives with higher power density than AMC has ever done before. The IMPACT™ architecture that makes FlexPro’s compact form possible can also be applied to custom servo drives of various shapes.