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Integrated servomotors are `world’s most powerful`

17 January, 2011

The Californian motion control specialist Animatics has announced what it claims is “the world`s most powerful integrated servo”. More than 100 of the new Class 5 SmartMotors can be linked via Can to create, in effect, a giant multi-axis controller.

A patent-pending technology called Combitronic allows any SmartMotor to read from, write to, and control any other SmartMotor to ensure reliability with no data collisions or losses. A program can be written in one motor to control all of the others, or each motor can have its own program, sharing resources with the others, in a giant multi-tasking, multi-processing system.

“We are very excited about Class 5 because it can do nearly anything – things even well-established, centralised controls cannot do,” says Animatics’ CEO, Robert Bigler. “Engineers love that they can write one simple program and not a stitch of code for communications.”

He reports that even before the new motors had been announced officially, Animatics had sold thousands to key customers, winning business from conventional control systems and rival integrated servos.

Even without the Combitronic option, the Class 5 SmartMotors can communicate at speeds of up to 115.2kbd via RS-232 and RS-485 ports. Isolated 24V I/O has been added, program execution speeds have been increased, and advanced gearing, camming and contouring functions have been added.

Animatics launched its first integrated SmartMotor in 1994, integrating a brushless motor, encoder, controller and amplifier. It has recently revamped its Web site to mark the arrival of the fifth generation.




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