Medical Devices

Which is better: Selecting motors and mechanics that are the best of breed from different manufacturers OR sticking with one supplier?  Here are the factors to consider.

Which is better: Selecting drives and motors that are the best of breed from different manufacturers OR sticking with one supplier?  Here are the factors to consider.

Which is better: Selecting products that are the best of breed from different suppliers OR sticking with one supplier?  You don’t want to find yourself pushing a train under water with a VW Bug with square wheels!

For my 30th episode, I thought I'd celebrate by sharing a little bit of the goofs and fun and laughter and jokes and frustration that we've had along the way in making the first 29 episodes.

Robots are easy to specify, but they lock you into their design. Modular mechanics take a little more engineering but provide flexibility that you may need. Here are 10 questions to consider for this decision.

On the surface, converting fluid power (pneumatic and hydraulic) actuators to electric actuators is simple.  And it can be.  But, there are a few things that I've run into that tend to hold things up that you may want to be aware of right off the bat.

How well a linear actuator performs in its straightness and flatness is highly dependent upon its Abbe Error…that is the angular error caused by the rolling, pitching and yawing of the carriage as it moves.  But, why does it change the performance…and by how much?

After all this education and talking about sizing and selecting electric linear actuators, you probably are wondering what tools you have available for you to take a crack at it yourself.

We've talked about loading and moment loading and what we need to know in order to size and select an actuator properly. Interestingly enough, what we do as Application Engineers is to help you fill in all the gaps, all the what-you-don’t-knows. So, I've asked one of our Senior Application Engineers, Kent Martins, to go through a sizing and show you what he does.

What happens if you use the incorrect terminology?  What if you say “accuracy” but need “repeatability”?  We interview Ray Marquiss in Episode 23 to find out.

You may be at the point of looking at adding feedback to your mechanics in order to make them more precise or to capture some of the errors I discussed last episode in Episode 20. But, you may also be wondering about some of the problems that can cause.

LOSTPED is an acronym where LOSTPED stands for Load, Orientation, Speed, Travel, Precision, Environment and Duty Cycle.  But, what does it REALLY mean?

You cannot just start on the mechanics, pick the motors, pick the drives, pick the controls, pick the HMI.  First you must understand everything all together.  Since we're talking about mechanics, there's a few things we need to kind of jump on right off the bat.  To figure out the holistic approach, there's a lot more to it.

When we size, select, and design gantry systems such as this one, we must make sure that we take into account the whole framing that this is going to be mounted on.

Back in Episode 6, I explained to you the different types of linear mechanics.  This included ballscrews, belt & pulleys, linear motors and even rack & pinion.  I get the question all the time: which linear mechanics do I use?

A very important factor to keep in mind when sizing your gantry system is the cable management and cable lengths you'll need. If you think about it, we're going to need cables to span throughout every axis of motion.

After taking a break from mechanics for a few episodes, we're returning to the idea of a gantry. But, you may wonder what a gantry looks like. For an explanation of that, we're going to turn to Valin’s own Michael Reynaud with a special animation by Valin’s Cassidy in order to show you what a gantry looks like.

I am continuing my conversation with you about EMC installation. We talked about electrical noise, where it comes from and how we control it. We talked about the reasons for Mains filters. Now I'm going to talk a little bit about how to select Mains filters and unfortunately, it's a real black art.

Continuing on talking about electrical noise, I often times have suggested mains filters to customers and they say, “Well I'm not shipping my system to Europe so I don't need it.”  But there are very good reasons for putting a mains filter on your system even when you're not shipping it to Europe.  Let's take a look at this.

This overview will help you to understand the differences between industrial automation manufacturers, representatives, distributors and integrators…and who you want to reach out to for help.

We've been talking about a lot of different basic terminology.  Now we're going to talk about just some basic types of linear mechanics.

We're continuing on with talking about some of the basic terminology and things you need to know in order to be able to size your own mechanics and gantry. We cover motion requirements and a summary at the end of the last several episodes.

As we dive further into sizing and selecting mechanics, there are a couple of terms that are extremely important in understanding the requirements of an application.

Before we dive into the meat of the matter of sizing and selecting mechanics, there are some basic concepts we need to understand: namely the force, torque, moment, inertia, and axes of motion.