What are Servo Motors and Servo Drives?
Credit to Author: Atin Chhabra| Date: Tue, 08 Jan 2019 16:11:31 +0000
Servo Motors
Servo Motors are simple electric motors which are controlled for specific angular rotation with the help of an additional servomechanism. They are a combination of particular parts which include DC and AC motors. They are used in a closed loop mechanism which registers its position feedback to control its rotational speed.
However, nowadays, servo motors consist of large industrial applications for controlling purposes. They are majorly seen in remote-controlled toy cars to monitor the motion. These are also used in CD or DVD players as the motor which moves its tray. Apart from these devices, we see hundreds of servo motors being used in our daily lives.
Simple servo motors use DC motors and position them accordingly through a potentiometer. A servo motor moves at high speed, until and unless it is stopped at a designated position or by the controller. These kind of servo motors are favorite in radio-controlled devices such as model aircraft and toy cars. The servo motors used in an industrial setup have both position and speed sensing. They also implement proportional-integral-derivative control algorithms, which lets the engine get to its position quickly without any fail as the speed of the shaft can also be controlled.
Servo Drives
A servo drive can also be termed as an amplifier because it takes the control signals from all the controllers and amplifies it to give out a certain amount if the voltage and current of the motor.
There are various types of servo drives, but the most common one is the torque-mode amplifier. It converts the command signal from the controller into the specific motor current. They offer a wide range of advantages, starting from automatic machining systems, which includes superior positioning, speed, and motion control.
They can be used in CNC machining, factory automation, and robotics, among various other industrial applications as well.
Similar to servo motors, their main advantage over DC or AC motors is the addition of motor feedback. This motor feedback will help in detecting any unwanted accuracy of the command motion. Servos have a better lifecycle when used in a constant speed, rather than the typical AC wound motors.
In an industrial setup, both servo motors and servo drives are equally essential and used for monitoring the position and sending speeds. If you want to know in detail about the functioning of servo motors then visit Schneider Electric.
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