Welcome to Oriental Motor's "Engineering Notes" Blog:

The terms "absolute" and "incremental" come up frequently in the world of position control.  The exact meaning can be the type of motion done by the motor in programming terms or the type of feedback device used with the motor.  In this article, we will focus on the differences between an incremental closed-loop feedback system and an absolute closed-loop feedback system.

The word, "AlphaStep", describes Oriental Motor's patented Hybrid Control technology, which offers improved stepper motor performance by sensing the rotor position and automatically switching between open-loop and closed-loop operation when necessary.  This post explains the unique technologies offered within the AlphaStep family of products and summarizes the numerous integrated options available.  It also can serve as a website navigation guide (video added).

Along with the advancement of industrial technology, maintenance methods of motion control components of a machine, such as motors, drives, and sensors, have also evolved.

Most of us still use the traditional "reactive" maintenancemethod in many aspects of life, such as replacing a dishwasher in your kitchen.  People don't buy a dishwasher until theirs doesn't work anymore.  Well, for factories that rely on consistent uptime for production, this wasn't the best strategy.  Realizing the need for improvement, maintenance personnel started to estimate life and replace motion control components before they failed.  This is called the "preventive" maintenancemethod, which also wasn't a perfect strategy for cost.  More recently, with the advancement of IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) technologies and real-time availability of status data, another method was made possible - the "predictive" maintenance method.

Robot adoption is increasing in many industries due to global efforts in reducing long term costs, maintaining quality, and freeing up time for humans to do "human" tasks.  For example, by using a robot to clean floors or restock shelves in a supermarket, human employees can spend more time helping or selling to their customers.  A company can either tap into this robotic trend by buying ready-made robots, or by making their own with less cost. 

If engineering resources are limited, selecting the right components can reduce the difficulty and time for building a robot.

There are many mechanisms that convert rotary motion of an electric motor to linear motion, such as belt/chain drives, screw drives, rack & pinion drives and even CAM drives.  Each mechanism offers advantages and disadvantages. Choosing the right technology can help increase load, speed, travel distance, or positioning accuracy.

An AC motor can be simple to use, but its speed changes according to the size of the load or amount of voltage supplied.  For an application where keeping a uniform speed is important, there is another type of motor that can improve performance.

The BLH Series compact BLDC motors and drivers have been around for a long time, and there is a good reason.  Customers seem to favor the combination of a highly efficient, compact motor and a light weight board type driver that is easy to use.  Having a high torque, flat style hollow shaft gearhead as an option also helps in increasing torque as well as minimizing footprint.

Are you using motors for a start/stop conveyor or similar application?  While AC motors are a common choice for conveyors, there is a unique speed control motor solution available that could improve stop accuracy as well as reduce footprint and cost of machine designs.

What motors do you use for pumps?  For variable speed pump applications that typically use 3-phase AC induction motors with variable frequency drives (VFDs), there is another type of motor that can transfer fluids more consistently and help reduce footprint.