PCBmotor Wins Electronics Creativity Award

Piezo motor manufacturer PCBmotor has been named the winner of the Editor's Choice category at the 'EE Times' sixth Annual Creativity in Electronics awards. The company's product was selected as a winner due to its motor design enabling motors to be mounted directly onto a printed circuit board (PCB). This is said to reduce application cost and introduce new design opportunities. Traditional design methods use PCBs as motor controllers with connections to a physical motor located somewhere in the vicinity of the card.

In order to build smaller, cheaper and better applications, designers must think outside of the box. Using the new technology, PCBmotor said designers can: reduce application size by integrating the motor and all electronics into one PCB; reduce bill of materials - the company's direct drive eliminates gears; further eliminate cost by getting rid of screws, wires, connectors and manual assembly; and increase design options with the hollow and ultra-slim form factor of the PCBmotor.

The actuator components for the PCBmotor are SMD-mounted directly on the PCB. Technically speaking, the PCBmotor consists of two parts: the stator, milled out of the PCB itself, holds the piezos/actuators and electrical connecting circuit (the PCB can also hold the driver); and the rotor, pressed onto the surface of the stator, delivers the mechanical output. A travelling wave is generated over the stator surface, acting as a flexible ring to produce elliptical motion on the rotor interface.

The elliptical motion of the contact surface propels the rotor and the connected drive-shaft. 1 x 1mm piezo ceramic components are mounted on the PCB. Operation depends on friction between the moving rotor and stator as well as amplitude and quality of the wave travelling on the stator. The rotor can turn between 60 and 120rev/min with torque ranging from 1Nmm to more than 70Nmm, depending on the stator's diameter, number of piezo components and the rotor design and material.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

What is Class I Division 2?

FUSE SIZING CONSIDERATIONS FOR HIGHER EFFICIENCY MOTORS

7/8 16UN Connectors that Provide 600 Volts and 15 Amps