Technical Computing Magazine - Issue 38

Make motor design a well-oiled machine

Discover how engineers at Indramat optimised and shortened the development cycle of motion control systems using VisSim/Motion, a package which includes a pre-built library that simulates motors, controllers, sensors, transformers, loads and voltage sources.

Machine builders throughout industry are under pressure to provide higher throughput, greater accuracy, higher reliability (uptime) – all at lower cost. Motor suppliers like Indramat can help machine builders keep design costs low and shorten the development cycles by being able to guarantee the performance of their products, thereby avoiding the time and expense of building prototypes or testing the equipment.

The Challenge
Indramat supply servo motors, drives and computer controls. To stay competitive, they must be able to deliver quality products that meet the exact performance specifications required by their customers. For example, if a motor’s torque and velocity is too strong it will excite resonances in a machine. Indramat must determine the appropriate motor and drive, along with the exact set of control parameters, by taking into account factors like the mechanical load and the mass of the customer’s machine. They must be able to prove to the customer that these parameters will deliver the required performance bandwidth.

Until recently, they provided that proof by testing the components in a lab. They took the selected motor and drive from stock, connected them to a large steel wheel with the same mass as the customer’s machine and then ran tests for half a day.

Indramat wanted a cheaper, less time-consuming method of testing components, so turned to VisSim - an interactive Windows-based modelling and simulation software program. They liked the software’s ease of use and visual block-diagram approach to system design, but wanted to test whether it could accurately model motion control applications. So they ran some simulations with VisSim and compared it with their lab results. VisSim’s predictions matched the lab results on enough tests to convince them of the accuracy and reliability of the software.

They now use VisSim on a regular basis to predict motor velocity and motor torque - two critical components used to select the correct motor and drive systems for customers – and provide them with assurances about their performance.

This is part of a larger case study. Click here to download the full article and find out about other ways Indramat are using VisSim to save testing time and deliver better products.

Contact our product specialists for more information.