Integrated drives on servo motors are created by manufacturers to reduce commissioning time, form factor, and machine footprint. To increase performance and safety, they cost more and are more challenging to use. When choosing one or more for your project, these should be considered to potentially save time and resources.
Integrated Drives: External Considerations
Integrated drives have different form factors and machine footprints, or sizes and shapes. Also, servo motors can be connected with each other in certain manners when using several of them. These can affect your choices when choosing a servo motor for your project.
Integrated Drives Form Factor: Top or Side Mounted, or Rear or Back Mounted?
A usual option for manufacturers is to place integrated drives on the rear of the motor, where heating is a common issue. To compensate, a smarter design or a ventilation system is necessary. Another option to make the form factor shorter is to stack the integrated drive to the side or top. However, it creates huge mechanical changes and a larger design footprint.
Integrated Drives System: Cascaded or Distributed?
To connect integrated drives with each other, connecting them via Ethernet cable is already available. When connecting the servo motors in series it is a cascaded or daisy-chained connection. The power connection, however, is not in series; but the weakest link of the whole system is the failure of the first servo. On the other hand, you can make a distributed servo drive system with a distribution module for connecting all the servo motors. It is a fail-safe system, however, it requires extra parts, making the control system larger.
Integrated drives: Internal considerations
A deeper investigation can be necessary for servo motor selection. Comparing the specs, integrated drives on servo motors perform differently. By checking the transistor types and safety system, you can utilize your servo motor to its intended use.
Transistor for Integrated Drives: IGBT or MOSFET?
For starters, IGBT and MOSFETS are types of transistors used by servo motors for switching. IGBT is proven effective for many years since it can handle large amounts of voltage and power. Using it for integrated drives is no surprise, but requires auxiliary components for cooling and complex wiring. On the other hand, MOSFETs are smaller in size but can handle large current changes, making it perform more efficiently. The size of integrated drives will be compensated by their size, especially for small scale servo motors.
Safety System for Integrated Drives: Separated or Integrated?
It is common to see a separate safety system from the integrated drive servo system. However, it is expensive and less efficient, because a separate software and dedicated wiring is necessary. Another option is to use servo motors with integrated safety system, but not every servo motor in your project needs them. They are only useful in critical instances and operations like industrial automation.
Learn More About Servo Motors and Integrated Drives
Integrated drives are better options for robot makers who want to save time and resources. Hopefully, these helped you choose which servo motor should you use for your project. Do you need more helpful information like these? Learn more about servo motors by clicking here.