AC Motors and Encoders

AC motors and encoders are two impor­tant parts of a robot. They give the robot pur­pose. With­out them, there would be no motion, and with­out motion, the robot has no pur­pose – unless, of course, some­one wants a large indus­tri­al robot­ics stat­ue for their liv­ing room or workplace.

An AC motor is a motor that is pow­ered by an alter­nat­ing elec­tric cur­rent. Until recent­ly, an alter­nat­ing cur­rent motor was not the best option for robot­ic oper­a­tion. Many robots in the past used only direct cur­rent, or DC motors. How­ev­er, as AC motors began to improve with the advance­ment of micro­elec­tron­ics, these motors were able to be more wide­ly used in sev­er­al dif­fer­ent robot mod­els, to com­plete many dif­fer­ent appli­ca­tions. Why make the switch? An AC motor is more inex­pen­sive than some of the oth­er motors on the mar­ket, and it can low­er the price of the robot­ic sys­tem overall.

Every AC motor on a robot also has an encoder. Accord­ing to an arti­cle from Ana­heim Automa­tion, encoders are sen­sors that turn the AC motor’s motion into dig­i­tal sig­nals, or feed­back, that give the oper­a­tors infor­ma­tion about the path and posi­tion of the robot’s motion at any time dur­ing the appli­ca­tion. This helps the oper­a­tors to improve the path tra­jec­to­ry and pre­emp­tive­ly clear up any prob­lems before they cause larg­er issues.

Are you inter­est­ed in learn­ing more about AC motors and encoders, and how they can help improve the func­tion­al­i­ty of your robot­ic sys­tem? Then you should pick up the phone and call Robots​.com. WE pro­vide robots from Fanuc, Motoman, KUKA, Uni­ver­sal Robots, and ABB. Our staff will help you find the right robot­ics sys­tem for your facil­i­ty and budget.

For more infor­ma­tion, con­tact Robots​.com today at 877−762−6881.