The year is half over and it seems like a great time to review the servo drive trends we've seen so far in 2019 and to go over what we expect to see for the rest of the year.
Latest Trends
Smaller
Warehouse applications are being developed to automate order fulfillment for ecommerce. Automated robots are being used to retrieve products in the warehouse and deliver them to be packaged for shipping.
Collaborative robots (or cobots) need smaller servo drives so they can be embedded within the robot arms. Reducing the size and weight reduces the inertia of the robot arm and increases the payload weight of the arm.
More Power
New battery chemistries such as lithium ion, lithium polymer (LiPo), and lithium iron (LiFe) have greatly increased the amount of current available in battery powered applications. Since the torque output of a motor is proportional to the amount of current that is going through it, engineers are demanding higher current servo drives in order to accelerate heavy loads more quickly and make systems more responsive.
In the first half of 2019, we saw 50A peak and 25A continuous as a starting point. There is demand for currents approaching 250A peak and 125A continuous and more.
Flexibility
On the power side, we will be introducing an assortment of current levels and operating voltages to meet the demands of different applications.
Customization
FlexPro
Back in November of 2018, ADVANCED Motion Controls® gave a preview of a new product platform that was promised to make 2019 a defining year in the advancement of servo drive technology. The new product was called FlexPro™, and it had twice the power density of any previously released servo drive. With a footprint roughly the size of 2 postage stamps it could output 50A peak and 25A continuous. It attracted a lot of attention at the SPS show in Nuremberg.
As promised, we started taking pre-orders for the new FlexPro FE060-25-EM on March 1, 2019. Once we started shipping and we got the new servo drives into our customer's hands, the response was enthusiastic and promising. With the new capabilities and higher power density, engineers were set free to come up with designs that were previously impossible or very difficult due to size and performance constraints.
In Conclusion
System designers are demanding these advancements in order to maximize their designs. In mobile robotics any excess mass that must be accelerated and decelerated is wasted energy that drains the batteries. Reducing mass creates an energy savings that can increase the time between battery charges. In addition, smaller form factors mean smaller enclosures and peripherals which can further reduce the weight as well as make room to increase the payload volume.
by Rene Ymzon, Marketing Manager
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