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

Proper sizing of a motor requires that 3 criteria must be met: torque, load inertia, and speed.  For the first part of this Motor Sizing Basics series, I will be explaining what load torque is, how to calculate it for specific application examples, and how it fits into the torque requirement for the application.

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.

As efficiency becomes increasingly important, another type of gear is being adopted for right angle gearheads over the common worm gears.

The MEXE02 support software is a universal motion control and monitor software used with multiple products from Oriental Motor, such as the AZ Series, RK2 Series, BLE2 Series, and BX2 Series.  This article is useful for first-time users to gain a quick understanding of the software and what it can do.

For applications where torque needs to be limited, an external mechanical torque limiter is typically required in addition to the motor system.  When the torque exceeds the limit, the torque limiter will either decouple the load or limit the torque by slipping.  An electric motor system's built-in torque limit function can simplify machine designs by eliminating this extra component.

Robotic grippers are typically used to grip parts for transport.  The driving force behind a gripper can be pneumatic, hydraulic, or electric.  Which type is best for gripping?

In the market of electric motors, there are products designed for general purpose applications, and there are motors designed for specialized applications, such as automated guided vehicles (AGVs) or autonomous mobile robots (AMRs).  While standard, general-purpose motors work for most applications such as factory automation, sometimes, it may help accelerate your design cycle by going with a motor system that already offers the features that you are planning to design into your machine.  In this post, we will summarize some of these features.