Servomotors – how do they work?
Servomotors can be highly efficient, accurate and cost-saving solutions to a number of manufacturing processes. But you may not have heard of them before.
We’re going to go into exactly what servomotors are, and how they do what they do. Then, we’ll go over why you should consider using servomotors if you’re in the manufacturing industry.
What are servomotors?
A servomotor is a small, self-contained electric device. It is often used as part of a closed-loop system, which is a set of devices that automate processes without human involvement.
Some of the other parts of a typical closed-loop system can include a control circuit, an amplifier, drive gears and more, as well as the humble servomotor itself.
The role of a servomotor within a closed-loop is usually to rotate parts of a machine, with a high degree of accuracy, speed and precision.
How do they work?
A servomotor performs its job thanks to an electric signal. This is because a servomotor is made of two distinct parts: the motor itself, which creates the rotation, and a sensor.
This sensor receives electrical signals, which then determines the amount of movement a servomotor needs to input, as well as the speed. This is a form of data known as positional feedback.
A servomotor sensor is also known as an encoder, and is built into the machine. This makes sure a servomotor can receive and understand what position it needs to be in at any given time.
What types of servomotors are there?
There are two main types of servomotors, known as AC and DC. These, as you might expect, correspond to the type of communication they use.
But this is only the basic level of servomotor designs, as they get far more advanced. You can use brushed or brushless servomotors, which affects how they regulate or reverse directions.
Finally, you can get servomotors with different rotating fields. These rotating fields can be either synchronous or asynchronous, which relates to the speed at which the servomotor can rotate different parts.
What are they used for?
Servomotors have several useful applications in industry, engineering, manufacturing and construction. They play a vital role on a lot of production lines, as a way of controlling the placement and rotation of different machines.
They’re also often used in AI and robotics design today, in order to make sure different parts or limbs of machines can move in the required direction. The auto-focus option on some cameras also uses a servomotor, so that out of focus images can be sharpened quickly.
Servomotors are just one spoke on an ever-changing wheel of different machines and parts used in the engineering industry.