MOTION SYSTEM TRENDS
Actuators displace other motion options — including manual designs
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oday, electric actuators are easier than ever to specify and install. Value-add services from component suppliers as well as application-specific actuator product lines (especially for battery-powered designs in mobile equipment and consumer use) eliminate many integration tasks for OEMs and end users. These are trends supported in part by a movement Design World has tracked for the last several years — that of increasingly preintegrated motion builds. Fastest growth is in compact motion designs aimed at replacing manually operated functions.
We cover the increase of electric-actuator programmability (and how component suppliers and their distributors are supporting some of this work) below. But besides trends related to I4.0, Proeger of Trinamic Motion Control (quoted above) notes more aspects of human life being automated. Read the LINAK application feature that follows this piece for one example related to increasing ergonomics of off-highway machinery. Others see the same trend — especially for electric actuators.
Jonas Proeger • Trinamic Motion Control: The big overlying trend we see is what some call the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Dave Humblet | Senior application engineer with PBC Linear: Some recent applications illustrate the trend towards more OEMs incorporating accessibility and serviceability features in their designs with actuators and other linear-motion designs. In one instance, linear actuators provide cab movement on a trenching machine for operator visibility. More specifically, this design uses PBC Linear CCR16 linear shafting and FLN16 standard linear bearing in a customer housing. Advantages here include availability; good load ratings; and robust design.
Two important things follow out of this: •
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More and more aspects of human life are being automated … including functions serviced with large machines as well as small everyday tasks. Software-defined machines are seeing exponential rise in use. A perfect example of this is the 3D printer: These machines can fabricate anything provided with appropriate software. But it’s not just 3D printers … in fact, software-defined machines also enable new fabrication plants that nowadays aren’t built for one product alone … but rather accept reprogramming or even modification of every part manufactured according to customer demand — for what industry calls mass customization.
As products and machines are increasingly software defined (without any change to the machine physics) we think lower-level functions (such as motor control and ramping) should be done in proven building blocks that keep working reliably — even when the application software changes. What’s unique about Trinamic offerings is the partitioning between hardware (where our designs execute motor control and software tasks) which our customers leverage for communications stacks and application code. In the past, most actuators were built by OEMs that would buy motors, rotary-to-linear devices, and couplings and then execute assembly in-house. Today, specification of turnkey electric actuators is the norm for projects involving just a few or thousands of axes.
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Another big trend in electric actuators is their use in replacing pneumatics. Peter Zafiro • LinMot USA: Most actuators in industry are pneumatic. Anybody who says otherwise doesn’t spend enough time in typical automated production plants. Even in nonautomated plants, there’s lots of air being used. That means there’s still a lot of room for electric actuators … these motion components are getting easier to use. This means we need to step up and educate end users on how expensive compressed air can be — even at the ultra-cheap electrical rates we have in the U.S. Plus, you must factor in the noise….and the maintenance… and the hassle of frequent repairs. One plant manager used our product for 18 months in an exact duplicate of a pneumatic application. The liner motor electric actuator we provided worked better than the pneumatic cylinder and resulted in greater productivity. It wasn’t until we brought in a high-efficiency compressor, created a perfectly leakfree air-delivery system to run his pneumatic cylinder machine, measured the kilowatt hours used, and compared this to the linear motor electric actuator machine, that he accepted our electric actuator solution. The LinMot solution used 3% of the motioncontroltips.com | designworldonline.com
3/11/19 2:59 PM
