An Ultimate Guide to Precision Motion Control!

Kensington Laboratories
3 min readAug 21, 2023

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Precision Motion Control — Kensington Labs

Manufacturing industries are being rapidly modernized and improved to fulfill consumer demands for quality and just-in-time delivery, which is no secret. Motion control is essential to the trend away from human processes and towards automation. Basically, precision motion control is a part of automation that works with the controlled movement of particular machine parts. This is especially useful in applications like production lines where strength, effectiveness, and precision of movement are crucial. A precision motion control system makes it happen for a machine to work, but more importantly, it assures that it can stop. Due to the expanding fields of study and industrial applications, more motion technologies exist nowadays than can be fully covered in a single article. However, it implies that a variety of industries' motion control engineers and designers now have access to precise motorized positioning solutions that match or even facilitate their applications.

What Are the Components of Motion Control?

“Motion control” does not refer to a specific part or component. Instead, it refers to a collection of parts that combine to produce a machine’s-controlled movement. Major features of it include:

Controller — A motion control system’s “brain” that manages the motors and drives is nothing more than a controller, which is only an electronic device. The number of controllers utilized will change depending on how many distinct processes need to be regulated in each application, such as a production line. There could be a huge number of controllers for a complex system. The basic computer that oversees the complete production line may give instructions to each controller and get responses from them.

Motor Drive- The motor drive acts as a sort of intermediary between the controller and the motor. It decodes the controller’s signal and then provides the motor with the appropriate amount of power to produce the required motion.

  • Motor — There are numerous configurations and uses for motors used in motion control systems. However, their key job is to get inputs from the motor drive and convert them into motion. Typical motor types in motion control systems include the following:
  • Stepper — Stepper motors frequently function similarly to standard electric motors. However, every shaft movement can be divided into separate “steps” due to the specific magnetic arrangement inside of them. 200 steps of 1.8 degrees each could be there in a typical stepper motor’s shaft rotation. This makes it happen for manufacturing line parts to be placed very precisely.
  • Servo — A servo motor offers a highly precise and potent method of controlling angular motion.
  • Linear Actuator — These devices transform a motor’s rotating motion into linear motion that resembles a pneumatic cylinder.

These are the three main components of modern motion control systems. Motion control systems and wafer handling robots play a key role in the growing trend of industrial automation. Because of this, it is imperative to create reliable, effective, and cost-effective motion control systems, which can only be done if you have a solid grasp of the underlying principles.

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Kensington Laboratories
Kensington Laboratories

Written by Kensington Laboratories

Kensington Laboratories is a leading supplier of wafer handling robots, precision motion control, integrated stages, linear stages and rotary stages since 1976.

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