Developments In Motion Control Technology Streamline Industrial Automation Design

Accurate motion control is the heart of modern industrial automation. Whether it's a robotic arm assembling intricate electronic components or a conveyor system managing the flow of goods, this technology plays a pivotal role in achieving seamless operations. It is like the invisible but ever attentive servant that delivers precisely, accurately and predictably the movements that the system mandates, bringing robots, CNC machines, and numerous other automated processes to life. The quality of its design has a huge impact on the speed, efficiency, quality and material consumption of the industrial process as a whole.

Developments in Motion Control Technology streamline Industrial Automation Design
Accurate motion control is the heart of modern industrial automation. Whether it's a robotic arm assembling intricate electronic components or a conveyor system managing the flow of goods, this technology plays a pivotal role in achieving seamless operations. It is like the invisible but ever attentive servant that delivers precisely, accurately and predictably the movements that the system mandates, bringing robots, CNC machines, and numerous other automated processes to life. The quality of its design has a huge impact on the speed, efficiency, quality and material consumption of the industrial process as a whole.

Analog Devices, a pioneering leader in the field of motion control solutions, has been at the forefront of innovation, driving progress and reliability across various industries. As a trusted advisor, Analog Devices work together with customers to co-create easily adopted solutions, enable digital transformation, and build a sustainable industrial future.

In this month’s edition, Pierre Morris, Field Applications Engineer at Anglia, provides an overview of the latest trends in motion control and solutions from Analog Devices, helping customers to optimize their designs to meet the need for greater efficiency and sustainability.

Intelligent Motion Control:
Intelligent motion control combines precision feedback, advanced sensing, high performance control, and seamless connectivity to deliver deterministic motion solutions that enable highly flexible and efficient manufacturing. Motion control solutions in robotics have evolved from basic on/off fixed speed motors to complex multi-axis servo-drive solutions. This transformation has been driven by the increasing complexity of automation required to deliver higher levels of performance and autonomy in smart manufacturing and to reduce energy consumption, examples shown in Figure 1.

Trends in Intelligent Motion Control
There are four key drivers accelerating innovation in the intelligent motion space: reduced energy consumption, agile production, digital transformation, and the move toward new service-based business models which rely on reducing downtime and increased asset utilization.

Reduced Energy Consumption
As much as 70% of the electricity used in industry is consumed by electric motors. Intelligent motion solutions deliver significant reductions in energy consumption by moving more applications from fixed speed motors to high efficiency motors and variable speed drives, in part driven by energy efficiency regulations.

Agile Production
As industries adapt to keep up with consumer demand, changing buyer behaviours and smaller batch sizes, agile production—based on reconfigurable production lines—is required to deliver more customization and faster turnaround times. Agile production increases resilience in times of disruption and enables a faster response to changing customer demands.

Digital Transformation
Motion data and insights from advanced sensing are now more accessible, as motion assets are networked together to share data in real-time. This data can be analysed by powerful cloud-computing and AI to optimize manufacturing flows and monitor the current state of health of the assets across the entire installation.

New Service-Based Business Models
Intelligent motion applications are integrating condition monitoring capabilities to implement real-time monitoring of industrial assets’ health. This creates new business model opportunities for predictive maintenance and service-based contracts around deployed assets, reducing unplanned downtime and delivering higher levels of productivity and asset utilization.

Sustainable Automation
Optimized industrial motor systems could help cut global electricity demand by an estimated 10% and significantly reduce industrial CO₂ emissions. The global electricity supply in 2022 was 28,642 terawatt-hours and was responsible for 36% of global CO2 emissions in 2022.¹ Industry consumes 30% of global electricity and within industry, electric motors make up 69% of power consumption.2 Each year more electric motors are deployed in industrial applications to drive pumps, fans, compressed air systems, material handling, processing systems, and more. The total cost of ownership of a motor driven system over the life of its deployment can be broken down into 3 categories, 70% electricity usage, 5% purchase of the motor and 20% for the maintenance of the motors3, as visualised in Figure 2.

It is therefore clear that by utilizing the new generation of higher efficiency motors and motion control assets we can help significantly reduce electricity consumption and CO2 emissions as well as reduce the total cost of ownership of a motor system.

The Driving Force for Intelligent Motion
Analog Devices have established a reputation for commitment to excellence in motion control solutions. Their dedication to innovation and performance has made them an industry leader for several decades. Their comprehensive range of intelligent motion control products are designed to cater to a wide variety of applications helping industry reduce electricity consumption and CO2 emissions.

A typical intelligent motion control system requires the following elements, all working in harmony.

Power Electronics
Isolated gate drivers, such as the MAX2270xx family of ultra-high common-mode transient immunity (CMTI) isolated gate drivers, are used to drive high- and low-side power semiconductors to provide robust, safety compliant, and high reliability assets. High voltage inverter applications often use IGBTs, with a future trend toward SiC and GaN to increase switching frequency and/or lower switching losses.

Current Feedback
A fundamental building block to enhancing drive performance, it determines the overall control bandwidth and response time. Key requirements for current feedback include synchronized measurement with PWM cycle, isolated or high common-mode measurement, low offset drift to minimize torque ripple, and low latency simultaneous sampling at 14- to 18-bit resolution to measure phase currents. Analog Devices are an industry leader in precision converters and contactless AMR current measurement which address this application.

Position Feedback
Position feedback is used for direct position control or for inferring rotational speed and implementing machine speed control. Resolver-to-digital converters (RDCs), optical encoders, and anisotropic magnetoresistive (AMR) position sensors, such as the ADA4571 integrated AMR angle sensor and signal conditioning IC, provide high bandwidth position feedback data for robust performance.

Machine Health
Machine health uses vibration and shock sensors to enable real-time condition monitoring of an asset’s health to eliminate unplanned downtime, extending the asset’s usable lifetime while also reducing maintenance costs. Analog Devices have a wide range of inertial sensing products for condition based monitoring (CbM) and predictive maintenance solutions, an example of this is their Voyager ³ wireless vibration monitoring platform which showcases these technologies integrated into a convenient plug and play format.

Network Connectivity
Industrial Ethernet connectivity with sub-ms cycle times network performance is required for deterministic real-time communication in motion control applications (servos and drives). Robust physical layer devices at 100 Mb and Gb speeds combined with Layer ² Industrial Ethernet protocols such as EtherCAT, PROFINET, EtherNET/IP, and IEEE time sensitive networking (TSN) ensure deterministic Ethernet connectivity. Analog Devices have an extensive portfolio of network connectivity solutions many of which were covered on these pages in September.

Motion Controller
Industrial environments are challenging for data communications because electrical noise and long cable lengths affect the stability and reliability of communications. In addition, motion controllers require higher power density power management solutions operating at high ambient temperatures to enable smaller form factors. They often utilise RS-485 communication to the encoder to provide accurate position feedback. Analog Devices offer a wide range of RS-232, RS-422, and RS-485 transceivers to suit applications for non-isolated interfaces, as well as digital isolation requirements using iCoupler technology.

Conclusion
In conclusion, a lot of elements are required each working in perfect synchronisation to enable a successful motion control solution, Analog Devices are a pioneer known for their precision, versatility, and commitment to innovation, their products are already at the heart of countless industrial automation processes across various sectors. With the continuous advancement of technology and their unwavering dedication to excellence, they continue to drive progress in the world of motion control, making industries more efficient, sustainable and reliable than ever before making them the partner of choice.

Design support
Anglia offers support for customer designs with free evaluation kits, demonstration boards and samples of Analog Devices products via the EZYsample service which is available to all registered Anglia Live account customers.

Anglia’s engineering team are also on hand to support designers, we can offer advice and support at component and system level. This expertise is available to assist customers with all aspects of their product design, providing hands on support and access to additional comprehensive Analog Devices resources which includes technical application notes and reference designs to help designers select the right product for their application.

Visit www.anglia-live.com to see the full range of Analog Devices products available from Anglia.

¹ Electricity Market Report 2023. International Energy Agency, February 2023.

² Paul Waide and Conrad U. Brunner. “Energy-Efficiency Policy Opportunities for Electric Motor-Driven Systems.” International Energy Agency, 2011.

³ “The Future Is Energy-Efficient, the Future Is Data-Driven.” ABB, 2022.

Extracts of this article are reproduced from “Reducing Industrial CO2 Emissions Through Increased Motion Efficiency” with kind permission of Maurice O'Brien, Strategic Marketing Director for Industrial Automation at Analog Devices.