Brushless Servo Drives

An Introduction to Our Latest Brushless Servo Drives

High-performing industries rely on demanding applications. Those same applications — including control loaders, traction drives, wafer spinning, medical imaging, and more — come with certain requirements that must be met. Our broad range of brushless servo drives were designed to help these industries excel amid the complexities.

Versatile and easily configurable to specific applications, they feature tools that significantly cut commissioning times. Engineers can leverage their ease of use, allowing them to swiftly configure the drives for optimal performance.

Brushless Servo Motor Drives: Application Configurable 

The base unit of our brushless servo drives includes many features that cover a multitude of applications. This built-in versatility means you can configure the drives to meet your exact needs, whether that is: 

• stand-alone motor controllers interfacing with the machine via handshaking;
• a distributed drive using one of several common communication busses (EtherCAT, ProfiNET, or CANOpen);
• or interfacing via Analog input with (direct or emulated) feedback to the machine controller. 

If the base unit does not have what you need, ask us about our special firmware options including Camming function, Cogging Compensation function, Sensorless function, and Induction motor function. We also offer a version for SIL 3 Safety function (PAC Safety Series). The PACHP Series can be ordered with Heatsink, without Heatsink (Cold Plate Version), or with Push Through Heatsink. 

Why our brushless servo drives are so easy to configure 

We want to make it easy to start leveraging our brushless servo drives — so we incorporated several features to help engineers quickly get up to speed. 

The user-friendly design includes a Windows-like GUI (free download) with a parameter tree to the left of the screen that you can walk through to configure the drive. If you run into trouble, a wizard offers support to help you complete the task. There are also application-specific templates that you can choose to make the configuration even quicker. 

Finally, tools like Auto Commutation Alignment (Auto Phasing) and Auto Tuning Features enhance the ease of use and lead to very short commissioning times.

Brushless Servo Drives: The Industries that Benefit 

Our brushless servo drives are engineered for a wide range of applications in high-performing industries. Whether you require precise speed, position control, high power density at low voltage, or synchronized positioning, you will find the answer in the Infranor series of brushless servo drives.

Semiconductor (wafer spinning) 

Requires: precise speed and/or position control with large inertia mis-matches.

Our PACHP Brushless Servo Drives feature high-bandwidth capabilities that — matched with the correct feedback on the motor — enable us to provide very tight control. Built-in sequences allow for home setpoint (orient point) and position loop speed control functions.

Flight Simulation (Control Loaders) 

Requires: precise torque control with very little disturbances. 

Our PACHP Brushless Servo Drives have a 16-bit current loop at very high bandwidth and special firmware for Cogging Compensation. Or match with one of our zero cogging motors for extremely smooth performance

Medical (Imaging) 

Requires: high power density at low voltage. 

Our EASY Series of Brushless Servo Drives features the power density required in addition to many built-in features, like Sequencing and IO handshaking, to ease the design time.

Robot (Traction Drive) 

Requires: high power density at low voltage similar to medical imaging. 

Our EASY Brushless Servo Drive can accommodate.

Packaging (Form Fill and Seal or Flying Shear) 

Requires: synchronized positioning with communication bus to share data. 

Our PACHP can utilize electronic gearing and ProfiNET or EtherCAT to satisfy this need. In some cases, we can perform the functions stand-alone.

What is a brushless servo drive? The basics. 

A brushless servo drive is a type of servo drive that uses a moving-part sensor (feedback) located in the motor to determine its position for use as commutation information. In contrast, a brushed servo drive uses physical brushes on a physical commutator that routes the voltage to the proper windings. 

In a rotary motor, there are permanent magnets on the moving rotor and stationary electro magnetic windings in the housing. To make the motor move, we need to know which winding coils to excite to create a magnetic field that attracts the natural pole-pair fields of the rotor. As it turns out, there is zero torque when the rotor and stator are aligned. But when they are 90 electrical degrees apart, there is maximum torque. 

The amplitude of current in the motor determines what the maximum torque can become. Zero current gives zero maximum torque. The sensor used to determine rotor position related to stator position can be a Resolver, or Encoder (there are many versions), or even crude Hall Effect Sensors. Sensorless operation can be handled by the PAC and Easy drives by using frequency control or back EMF sensing. 

Do you have questions for us? Contact us to learn more.