What Is Servo Motor and How It Works

When it comes to operating motor drive it is a servo motor that is used commonly to do this. What is a servo motor and how it works? The servo motor is a drive whose shaft can get into a specified position or maintain the specified speed of rotation. In other words, the servo shaft can be controlled, for example, by setting it a position in degrees or a certain rotational speed.

Saying simply what is a servo motor? It is a mechanism having a special sensor in its device by which certain values are tracked, a control unit and the motor itself. The device's task is to control and maintain parameters during operation, depending on the signal transmitted at a separate point in time.

The working principle of a servo motor is quite simple. The device operation occurs on the principle of reverse interaction with system signals. The servo drive at a certain point in time receives incoming parameters of the control value and supports it at the output of the element produced. When the electric motor is turned on, the output shaft rotation starts. You can connect or attach something to it in the future it is planned to manage.

The servo receives the specified value after that compares this value with the value on its sensor. In case of discrepancies, the control unit seeks to achieve and maintain the specified value so that it coincides with the value that comes from the sensor.

Main Principles of a Servo Motor Construction

In fact, the drive itself is an electric motor with a gearbox, it is the electric motor that converts electricity into mechanical action. But the rotation speed of the motor is not always suitable for achieving the goals. To make it possible to control the rotation of the motor, the gearbox is used. As a result, it lowers the speed of rotation of the output shaft to the desired value. The potentiometer controls the result obtained at the output.

In a schematic version, the main parts of each servo motor include:

• The drive itself that is an electric motor with a gearbox or related devices. In it, reducing the speed of movement, if it is too big is required.
• A feedback sensor or potentiometer changing the angle of rotation of the shaft.
• The unit that is responsible for managing and power.
• A converter or an input.

What Are Servo Motors Used for?

What are servo motors used for – that is the question we face regularly in Eltra-Trade. We can say in common that it is a device that will change your life in a great way.

Servo motors are used in a wide variety of areas, for example, in robotics, they help model various movements of robots. Servo drives - an effective solution for moving mechanisms in space.

They can be found in precision devices, automatic devices, systems producing various boards, programmable machines, industrial robots and other mechanisms. Motors of this type have become greatly popular in the aircraft industry due to effective energy consumption and uniform movement.

Due to the compatibility of modern digital servo motors i.e. a Siemens servo motor, with up-to-date operating interfaces, their use in robotic solutions for the industry is valuable. To achieve various purposes of robotics to the Arduino programmable controller, a servo can be connected. Connection is carried out through cables that come from a servo motor. Usually, these are three cables: red; brown or black; yellow, orange or white. The red cable is responsible for the servo-servo connection. Brown one is used for grounding. Yellow one connects directly to the Arduino board and is designed to transmit the control signal.

Besides that, almost every modern servo motor could be connected to digital operating interfaces like Profibus, PROFInet, DeviceNet and others. This allows using them in lots of industrial systems operated by machine intellect.

Types of Servo Motors

Besides their capabilities, when talking about what is the use of  servo motor it is necessary to consider several types of those devices. In general, there are several classifications for servo motors types.

1. There are two major types of servo motors due to their working principle that are AC and DC servo motors. What is an AC servo motor? These motors are those that can save the engine operation even at low revs. What is a DC servo motor? These devices set the rate of speed of the engine and other parameters, reaching the specified speed of rotation faster.
2. One more factor to divide several options of servo drives are their construction peculiarities. Due to them, all servo motors are divided into electromechanical and electrohydromechanical ones.
3. By the way of data transmission, all servo drives are also classified into analog and digital devices. They almost do not differ from each other in their look.

The main difference is in the principle of motor management. At analog servo motors, control occurs with a special chip, digital servo drives have a microprocessor. The microcircuit and the microprocessor are able to receive and analyze control pulses. Only on the chip, they usually come with a frequency of 50 Hz, and on the microprocessor - with a frequency of 200 Hz and more. As a result, the digital servo is more mobile and more clear to the control signal.

If you take up the results, then servo motors are a step into a new future for industrial systems. Due to the active implementation of automation in production, they acquire particular importance. And the ability to connect such a servo to modern interfaces for controlling systems can significantly speed up production processes, give them accuracy and expand production capabilities.

The ability to achieve high accuracy often becomes a decisive factor for applying servo. In addition, thanks to new digital developments, allowing to provide various ways to communicate with objects, the system uses a computer for control and configuration, which greatly simplifies work. And most importantly, due to accurate control of the turns of the servo motor, the engines allow you to significantly save. This is an energy-efficient solution that has already been applied in such innovative industries as robotics, automated production management systems, quality control and other industries.

You are welcome to get the most accurate, cost-efficient and profitable servo motors manufactured by Siemens, Schneider Electric, ABB and others in our Eltra-Trade web store. Want to get even more information about servo motors? Just contact us to get a full-fledged consultation about servo motors and their use in modern industries.

Stay tuned and we'll provide you with lots of useful information about Eltra-Trade products and their use in industrial systems.