Modern AC servo systems were first applied to the aerospace and military fields, such as artillery, radar control. Gradually entered the industrial field and civil field. Industrial applications mainly include high-precision CNC machine tools, robots and other broadly defined CNC machinery, such as textile machinery, printing machinery, packaging machinery, medical equipment, semiconductor equipment, postal machinery, metallurgical machinery, automated assembly lines, a variety of specialized equipment. Which servo the largest amount of industry, in order: machine tools, food packaging, textile, electronic semiconductor, plastics, printing and rubber machinery, totaling more than 75%.
The use of permanent magnet brushless servo motors instead of stepper motors for feeding in CNC machine tools has become the standard, and some high-end products began to use permanent magnet AC linear servo system. In the spindle drive in the use of high-speed permanent magnet AC servo instead of asynchronous frequency drive to improve efficiency and speed has also become a hot spot. since the 1990s, Europe, the United States and Japan are competing to develop and apply a new generation of high-speed CNC machine tools, high-speed spindle unit rotation in 30,000rpm ~ 100,000rpm, the table's feed rate in the resolution of 1μm to reach 100m/min, or even 200m/min or more, in the resolution of 0.1μs, more than 24m/min. Today's CNC machine tools highlight the characteristics of high-speed, high-precision, high-dynamic, high rigidity, the requirements of the position system include: positioning speed and contour cutting feed speed; positioning accuracy and contour cutting accuracy; finishing surface roughness; stability under external interference. The fulfillment of these requirements depends mainly on the static and dynamic characteristics of the servo system. We have seen domestic servo systems such as wide number of products in the economy of CNC machine tools on a wide range of applications, but in the medium and high-end CNC machine tools using domestic servo systems are still facing difficulties, performance is an important aspect, there is stability and reliability, and perhaps the brand effect is also difficult to overcome the obstacles in a short period of time.
In the field of robotics, brushless permanent magnet servo system has been widely used. Industrial robots have multiple degrees of freedom, and each industrial robot requires more than 10 motors. At present, the number of industrial robots owned worldwide is more than 1 million units, and the demand for robots is growing at more than 30% per year. The servo system used in international industrial robots is a specialized system, multi-axis, modular, special heat dissipation structure, special control methods, and extremely high reliability requirements. International robotics giants have their own exclusive servo system supporting, such as Yaskawa, Panasonic and ABB, this aspect of the domestic gap is obvious. Domestic industrial robot manufacturers are still using standard imported AC servo systems, domestic servo systems want to enter the field of industrial robot support, it is more distant. However, we have seen in some special robotics fields, such as anti-terrorism and explosion-proof robots, mine disaster relief robots and other lightweight mobile robots, the use of domestic based on low-voltage DC-powered micro-brushless servo system, such as the Hummingbird series of the HeLiShi motors have been successful. Of course, in the broader field of robotics, the need is not only AC servo motors, but also a variety of other micro motors, such as DC servo motors, linear motors, speed generators, resolvers, torque motors and so on.
The textile industry is currently a very low proportion of the application of servo, but is the future of AC servo high-volume application of one of the important industries. From the early 1990s to the present has been 15 years, technological progress in the textile industry is mainly dependent on frequency conversion, PLC. Only a small number of textile machinery using high-grade servo technology, used to improve precision and efficiency, there are high-grade carding machine, with self-leveling and slitting machine, new roving machine, CNC spinning machine, slitting warping machine, sizing machine, garden network printing machine and other equipment used in the application of AC servo. Shuttleless looms have begun to use with AC servo electronic warp feed and electronic winding, printing and dyeing equipment should also use the servo system. The annual servo dosage of these devices in 2, 3 million sets or so, and almost all are imported products, such as Lenze, Danaher, Siemens and Baumuller, and Mitsubishi and Panasonic, etc.. Price is the main factor restricting the popularization of large areas of AC servo, domestic products, although the price has a certain competitive advantage, but the performance indicators, reliability and environmental adaptability and other aspects of the lack of, but also need to continue to improve in branding, service, delivery and other aspects. In the following two aspects, we can see the success of domestic servo manufacturers, one is in the industrial sewing machine, in recent years, domestic servo controllers are gradually replacing Taiwan and other imported brands into the mainstream of the market, with low-cost motors, simple low-wire number of encoders, as well as integrated control and drive, in the solution to the batch stability of the domestic brands such as Shanghai BaoMax has been successful. Hundreds of thousands of units per year, which may be the next few years, the largest market for low-grade servo. Another close combination of user needs for the development of innovative cases, you can cite the control system developed by HeLiShi motor winding machine. The "winding machine" is a precision process equipment belonging to the weaving pre-process, will be a variety of natural silk winding into a variety of specifications of columns, pagodas, double conical tube, for dyeing, warping, knitting and other post-processes. The company makes full use of its comprehensive technology in stepping, brushless, servo, motion control, network communication, etc., and through the close cooperation with the largest spinning machine group in China, it has successfully developed the control system of the precision winding machine, the core of which is to utilize the highly dynamic servo transverse motor as well as the digital winding technology to realize the single spindle and digitalization by replacing the traditional mechanical transmission, and to rely on the CAN bus to contact between each spindle, which is the model of the application of shaftless technology. It is a model of shaftless technology application. The successful development of this product fully reflects the competitiveness of domestic manufacturers, and opens up a new way for domestic servo manufacturers to compete in the market.
Shaftless (e-axis) drive technology in the printing machine applications, but also the focus of the current global printing companies and machinery manufacturers. Shaftless drive is to replace the traditional mechanical drive chain with a number of individual servo motors, servo drives rely on high-speed field buses to contact each other, through the software to ensure that the servo axis to the internal virtual digital electronic axis to maintain strict synchronization. The use of shaftless drive technology for the production of printing machines, printing industry service revolution has brought the best solution, currently 50% of Europe's gravure printing machine using shaftless technology, Japan also has more than 30% of the use. Other machinery with shaftless drive includes web presses, flexo presses, varnishers, hot stamping machines, die-cutting machines and other types of printing equipment. This area of the top servo control solutions provider is from Germany's Bosch Rexroth, Lenze, Japan's Sumitomo and Austria's Bergerac. Domestic only individual manufacturers such as Beiren and Songde for the development of shaftless drive printing machines, some specifications of the performance indicators close to the international level, but the electronic shaft drive servo system and register control system are from Japan and Europe, domestic servo manufacturers have rarely been involved. Domestic servo and control systems to meet the requirements of this field, the need for top-level technology and a thorough understanding of the industry, it seems there is still a long way to go.
Packaging equipment, the use of servo control can increase the output per unit of time, improve resource utilization, increase the adaptability of varieties and improve product quality, so the AC servo in the extensive use of packaging machinery is only a matter of time. The use of digital servo technology, electronic gears and electronic cams will replace the traditional mechanical components, as prices fall, the cost is gradually approaching the purely mechanical program. Europe has an Elau company specializing in the design and development of digital servo and motion control solutions for packaging machinery, large-scale continuous packaging equipment in a leading position, while China has not yet appeared so professional solutions provider.
The emergence of new elevator traction machine in the past few years, the use of permanent magnet synchronous servomotor gearless direct drive, instead of frequency asynchronous drive, with higher control accuracy, dynamic characteristics, high efficiency, low noise, has become a hot product of the international and domestic major elevator factory, promoting the revolution in the elevator industry. Domestic elevator manufacturers such as Ningbo Shenling and Shenyang Bolint have developed their own traction motor products with imported vector control inverter or servo drive.