With the development of industries such as electronics manufacturing, semiconductors, and robotics in recent years, the complexity of equipment has increased, requiring a growing number of servo drive axes. However, traditional servo drives involve numerous cable couplings between axes, including communication cables, power cables, encoder cables, power feed cables, digital signal cables, analog signal cables, STO cables, and more. This complex cabling makes the equipment extremely bulky. The large number of cables not only leads to reliability issues and increases maintenance costs but also raises the overall system cost. This is especially true for small, precision equipment, which, due to space constraints and high reliability requirements, demands a higher degree of integration in its servo drives.
The multi-axis micro servo system adopts a new generation of servo technology. In addition to having a power density that is more than ten times greater than that of traditional multi-axis AC servos, a size that is only one-tenth the size of traditional AC servos, and a bandwidth that is more than twice that of traditional AC servos, it further integrates the internal interconnection cables between servo drives. The product's internal communication cables, power cables, power supply cables, digital signal cables, analog signal cables, and STO cables are interconnected. All axes share a single network cable, a single power cable, a single digital signal cable, a single analog signal cable, and a single STO signal cable. A single power cable enables energy input for all axes, and a single network cable enables control and sensing of all motors, all digital signals, and all analog signals. The types of motors can be arbitrarily combined among rotary servo motors, voice coil motors, linear motors, torque motors (DD motors), brushless motors, brushed motors, coreless motors, frameless motors, and geared motors.
Compared to traditional servo systems, this multi-axis micro servo system not only offers significantly improved performance and reduced size, allowing for close mounting to the motor and on-board power and network connectivity for the motion mechanism, but also largely eliminates the need for interconnecting cables between multiple servo drives. A single network cable is all that's needed to control and sense all motor, digital, and analog signals. This not only drastically reduces overall system and maintenance costs and maximizes equipment reliability, but also pushes the limits of miniaturization and high integration.
Traditional servo systems
Number of cables: (4 power cables + 4 power lines + 5~13 encoder cables + 2 network cables + 2 power feed lines + 4~10 digital signal lines + 2 analog signal lines + 2 STOs) * Number of shafts N. As the number of shafts increases, the number of cables becomes larger and larger, and the system reliability gradually decreases.
Multi-axis micro servo system
Drag chain cable: 1 network cable + 1 power cable
Regardless of the number of axes, the total number of cables is minimized, the cable length is shortened, and system reliability is improved. "We adhere to the concept of bringing servo drives closer to the motor, achieving motion control on the motion mechanism. Simultaneously, our products support the control and sensing of peripheral motor components, such as solenoid valves, pressure sensors, secondary encoders, and brakes. A single network cable can control and sense all motion control terminal components. By improving integration, we enhance the reliability, safety, and ease of use of the equipment, reducing the total system cost, especially for small and precise equipment in industries such as electronics manufacturing, semiconductors, and robotics, such as SMT equipment, 3-5kg small six-axis robots, Scara robots, and Delta robots." Stone Motion Control's Ruby series of multi-axis micro servo controllers is an industry-leading multi-axis micro servo controller product. It integrates the full functionality of multiple servo drives in a very small space, achieving world-class performance. Developed entirely according to the European R&D management process V model, it meets the European IEC61800 standard, has passed CE certification, and possesses European product quality.
Its main product features include:
1) High integration of multiple axes: One product integrates multiple servo drives, sharing power supply, network cable, STO, digital signal and analog signal.
2) High power density: The six-axis integrated driver is only 25cm*10cm*2.8cm in size, and each single axis has a rated power of 0-400w.
3) Ultra-fast response: Current loop bandwidth 4500Hz, speed loop bandwidth 1500Hz.
4) Precise force control: Achieve high-precision current control of 0.01A.
5) Strong main control compatibility: Supports EtherCAT, CANopen, and Modbus communication; supports CIA402 protocol; can be adapted to mainstream controllers in the industry such as Bausch & Lomb, Omron, ACS, and domestic manufacturers.
6) Multiple motor types compatible: Supports rotary servo motors, voice coil motors, linear motors, torque motors, DD motors, brushless motors, brushed motors, coreless motors, frameless motors, geared motors, etc.; the motor type for each axis can be randomly selected.
7) Multiple encoder compatibility: Supports incremental, absolute, and Hall encoder functions, and will soon cover almost all absolute encoder protocols in the industry.
8) Superior European quality: Meets the V model R&D management process and complies with IEC61800 and ISO9001 international standards.
9) Low power consumption: Efficiency is close to 99%.
10) High ease of use: Fully Chinese debugging interface, convenient configuration, and simple debugging. "We provide high-quality customized R&D services to meet the needs of high-end customers in China." "For high-end equipment, the general functions of servo drives are far from meeting customer needs. In addition to the high-end requirements of miniaturization, integration, high performance, and high reliability of products, the core processes of high-end equipment are deeply coupled with servo drives. It can be said that without the in-depth R&D participation of servo drive manufacturers, it is difficult to perfectly achieve the core process performance of the equipment."
Zhang Longfei, head of ISMC China, said, "We have found that some customers are facing the dilemma that foreign manufacturers do not provide customized R&D services and domestic manufacturers cannot meet the needs of high-end products. Without solving their own pain points, they blindly entered the servo drive track, which ultimately did not yield good results and also affected the marketization process of their products. In response to this industry pain point, we are willing to provide high-end product customized R&D services at the European level, deeply participate in the process R&D of high-end customers, and grow together with our customers."
