In-Motion Blog

A servo motor or drive overheats when heat generation exceeds heat dissipation. Every temperature-sensitive component in the system — winding insulation, bearing lubricant, permanent magnets, encoder, and drive power electronics — degrades at a rate that accelerates exponentially with temperature. This is why thermal failures are silent, cumulative, and expensive: by the time the fault code appears, service life has…

Undersize the power supply and the servo drive faults on undervoltage the moment an axis accelerates. Leave regenerative energy with nowhere to go and it faults on overvoltage the moment the axis decelerates. Between those two failure modes sits a sizing procedure built on four numbers: the continuous current the application actually draws, the peak current it draws in short…

What does it take to lead a global authority on engineering safety? For over 26 years, AMC's own Michael Nicholls hasn't just been ensuring our Servo Drives meet compliance; he's been at the helm of the IEEE Product Safety Engineering Society (PSES), helping other Engineers understand the standards that the entire electronics industry lives by. Navigating the "Wild West" of…

An innovator in specialized collaborative robotics overcame a critical prototype-to-production bottleneck by transitioning from standard servo drives to a custom multi-axis architecture. This consolidation significantly reduced motion control hardware costs and physical footprint while maintaining the high-bandwidth impedance control required for safe, human-centric interaction. The Challenge: High Precision Within Tight Spatial Constraints A developer was engineering a highly specialized collaborative…

An innovator in autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) successfully launched a new platform by partnering with ADVANCED Motion Controls to resolve complex network integration challenges. Through systematic diagnostics led by AMC applications engineers and targeted hardware modifications, the customer scaled production and accelerated their time-to-market. The Challenge: High-Density Power for an Ambitious AMR Design A developer of advanced AMRs was designing…

In the current global supply chain landscape, the physical location of your servo drive manufacturer is a critical risk factor. At ADVANCED Motion Controls, we adhere to a "Designed and Built in the USA" philosophy. This ensures that while we source top-tier components globally, the critical loop between Design, Manufacturing, and Testing happens under one roof in Camarillo, California, maximizing…

In motion control, “servo drive” and “servo controller” get used interchangeably all the time. That’s understandable — but it’s wrong, and the confusion costs engineers hours of troubleshooting they shouldn’t need to do. Here’s the clearest way to put it. The servo controller is the brain: it plans the motion, generates commands, and coordinates axes. The servo drive is the…

We hear the term “closed-loop control” all the time—especially in automation, motion control, and servo systems. But what does it actually mean? And more importantly… why do engineers care so much about whether a system is open-loop or closed-loop? At its core, closed-loop control is a simple idea: measure what happened, compare it to what you wanted, and automatically correct…

IP65 is an ingress protection rating defined by IEC standard 60529, meaning the enclosure is completely dust-tight and resistant to low-pressure water jets projected from any direction. Two digits. One decision. (Though “corrodes from the inside out” tends to focus the mind.) IP stands for Ingress Protection — the IEC 60529 classification system covering steel, stainless steel, polycarbonate, and aluminium…

So what actually separates these two motor types at a fundamental level? A brushed motor differs from a brushless motor in how it commutates: mechanically via carbon brushes and a copper commutator versus electronically via an external controller and Hall-effect sensors. That single architectural difference determines efficiency, lifespan, maintenance burden, and cost. The first brushless DC motor was developed in…

DC servo motors are a key element in motion control systems that demand precision, speed, and repeatability. They combine a DC motor with a feedback device, such as an encoder or potentiometer, and a controller to regulate position, speed, or torque in a closed-loop system.  The controller continuously compares feedback to the target input and adjusts power to minimise error,…

Servo motors are built for precision, whether it’s holding a position, helping to trace a toolpath, or maintaining a set speed under load.  But even the most reliable systems have their limits. Push those too far, skip routine checks, or operate in less-than-ideal conditions, and you'll start seeing servo motor faults creep in, sometimes gradually, sometimes with a (literal) bang.…

An AC servo motor is the powerhouse in many applications, as it’s known for generating precise motion control. You can find AC servo motors in different technology pieces ranging from home appliances to more advanced pieces like aircrafts and robots.  In this article, we’ll focus in detail on the mechanism of an AC servo motor, its parts and functions, and…

Not all servo motor types are the same, as they come in a wide range of shapes and sizes, with each type being suited to different applications. Well, perhaps the range of shapes is not so wide, as they all tend to be approximately cylindrical or rectangular in shape, depending on if they are rotary or linear.  But servo motors…

Servo Drives and Servo Amplifiers make up a tiny fraction of all of the types of amplifiers in the world. We thought it would be fun to explore all types of amplifiers and then see how servo amplifiers fit in. Amplifiers are found in all manner of devices in modern life. If you’re reading this article on a cellphone, you’re…