Industry applications and real world cases

There are numerous movement/motion control applications spanning a wide variety of industries that can utilize this new motor technology, including:

·       Health, Medico

·       Consumer Electronics

·       Industrial Automation

·       Camera (pan, tilt & zoom)

·       Laser, Optical

·       Rotary Stages

·       Lock Systems

·       Gauges & Dashboards

·       Aviation, Aerospace

·       Robotics, Mechatronics

·       Instrumentation Devices

·       … and many more

Two recent applications our technology’s been involved in include:

Health: Utilizing the hollow form factor to analyze fluids

Point-of-care health: 3D-rendering fluids

To be asked to provide the motor technology for a ‘point of care’ medical application for the health sector is always a great achievement – and a challenge. Our first thought was that the customer was mainly interested in an application that could meet the demands of super-high resolution.
While this was important, there were two other requirements that also had to be met: firstly, the motor and surrounding electronics’ design should ‘fit’ into and utilize a microscope’s limited space; secondly, that it could also provide the necessary holding torque without power on.

True to form

With the ability to develop motors of varying diameters that utilize the unique ‘hollow form factor’ design of the PCBMotor, we were quickly able to offer a viable solution to the space issues posed. Our hollow center motors (where the lens sits literally ‘in’ the motor ring) are particularly useful for medical device and microscope applications that use camera-analysis of pictures.

Position. Move. Steady. Click.

Building the application for this image analysis solution also required a motor with full holding torque when power was off with the ability to hold its position, completely still, without noise or vibration. The PCBMotor’s rapid start/stop (re-) positioning action allows for a significantly high number of pictures taken per second.

Accurate 3D-rendering on-site without any trade-offs

The result was a customized motor solution that delivers super-accurate 3D-rendering of various (fluid) samples.
Medical personnel can now perform important common sample tests immediately at the point-of-care, clinic, or field hospital without having to sacrificing the accuracy and precision offered by a central clinical lab.

Industrial automation: Valve application – A lifetime test

A test of endurance
When a (potential) customer asks ‘what is the lifetime of an on-board piezo PCBMotor’, it’s important to us (as it is them) that we have the right documentation. So when a valve manufacturer came to us asking for a solution to an application that required low building height, drive and no play, and high holding torque we realized straight away that the life of the motor was critical.

Performance testing for life

The Start-Stop test was set up to run for 125,000 cycles which corresponds roughly to over 1000 hours of operation. The method included placing a 30 mm (diameter) PCBMotor in a valve application together with a measuring gauge. The motor activated the valve, via a spindle, at five second intervals with a force of 100 N. The test was performed at approximately a 50% duty cycle to reduce the chance of a temperature rise resulting from self-heating.

The test concluded that no significant changes to the motor, its properties or performance occurred at any time during or after the test.

Prev Chapter 3 – Motor performance

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