Page 43 - Power Electronics News - December 2020

MOTION CONTROL Motion Control

Stepper motors might seem inferior to many form-factor, intuitive user interface, real-time

engineers compared to servo drives. However, capabilities, functional safety, and collecting and
stepper motor control has come a long way from sharing data with the cloud are the new focus
the simple ‘no tuning needed’ control scheme. of engineers. Quite frankly, the average engineer
Of course, you can still drive stepper motors might even consider motor and motion control as
the easy way without a problem for some appli- a necessary evil that stands in the way of his idea
cations but an increasing number of high-end and the conception thereof. That’s why intuitive
applications depend on the high torque at low development kits are key.
speed that a stepper motor delivers. From lab
automation to semiconductor handling and 3D Supporting motors with development kits, un-

printing to 4K surveillance cameras, the me- fortunately, is not that easy. And the reason is
chanical characteristics of these motors enable simple: every motor is different. Motor param-
engineers to realize drive systems without an eters are different, the pole count is different,
additional gearbox. And no gearbox means less the feedback system, if any, is different, and the
wear, less noise, and lower overhead cost. motor might need to be optimized and finetuned
for a specific use case. And that’s not even taking
Despite offering robustness and precision at low the variety of external interfaces into account

cost, stepper motors still have the reputation of which also need to be considered. Therefore, a
being noisy, introducing vibration, and not being ‘one size fits all’ solution that typically consists
very energy-efficient. A heritage from the driver of a microcontroller with a special motor con-
solutions used in the past which weren’t sophis- trol library in combination with a universal driver
ticated at all. In the meantime, however, micro- board will not work. There are simply too many
step operation in combination with sophisticated variables.
current choppers and even voltage choppers al-
lows for smooth, noiseless operation with adap- That’s why TRINAMIC Motion Control, now part
Enabling Intelligent tive current. Add the diagnostics features and the of Maxim Integrated, offers a broad spectrum

of development boards as part of their modular
advantage of no hunting – meaning no motion at
Automation with Motor all at standstill – and you suddenly have an in- evaluation system and why the company invests
dustry-leading solution for applications demand-
so much in the software, tools, and wizards to
ing perfect motion control. For those applications
support this system. The boards allow quick set-
and Motion Control in need of closed-loop operation an encoder can up of a prototype application so the average en-
gineer can try out different settings and finetune
be added, which could be a single Hall-based
component, to serve as a position sensor and the drive system needed to realize their idea.
By Michael Randt, Executive Director, Business Management at Maxim Integrated you suddenly have a full-blown servo drive minus Once the settings are perfect for their unique use

the gearbox! case, the code can easily be compiled and ex-
Driven by increasingly lower production cost, ier with plug-and-play building blocks offering ported in C for direct use in their own firmware.
BLDC motors are gaining popularity across the field-oriented control, or vector control, in hard- Just like motor control changed over the last two As for the hardware, the development boards are
board. Especially the introduction of consumer ware. While this combination enables a whole decades, so did the average engineer developing verified open-source designs under the MIT li-
drones and e-bikes resulted in mass production range of new applications including medical and the application. Nowadays, the average engi- cense meaning they’re free to use without having
of BLDC motors – once reserved for high-end, healthcare devices, we should not forget about neer wants to focus on what makes their device to share the result.
industrial applications. In parallel, development stepper motors. unique, not on developing a seemingly sophisti-
of once sophisticated servo drives became eas- cated drive system. Sleek designs with a minimal

42 DECEMBER 2020 | www.powerelectronicsnews.com DECEMBER 2020 | www.powerelectronicsnews.com 43