Gone are the days of plowing by horse—and that’s a good thing. We’re more efficient today so we can meet the growing demand for food. In fact, because we’re so good at farming in the United States, we provide a much needed resource for the rest of the world and it’s the backbone of our economy despite the fact that it only makes up 2% of our GDP. As the population of the world grows, efficiency in food will become even more important as reducing waste becomes the goal. To do that, we need technology that can work with us towards our goals.
Servo motors are a great example of efficiency when demand changes. Stepper motors, often a cheaper alternative, can’t always work as efficiently at slower or faster speeds and that’s important when we’re trying to be as efficient as possible. Take a harvest, for example. It varies significantly one week to the next, one part of a property to the next, or one year to the next. While we can try to make our produce as stable as possible there are too many variables to be 100% on target 100% of the time. Stepper motors can’t accommodate for these changes and always have to work at one middle-range, steady speed. Servos, on the other hand, can change.
Since servos have encoders that can detect where they are at all times and they operate on a system that constantly relays information, they can change speed and work efficiently at different processing rates. When corn is coming in by the truck load, they can be sped up to more efficiently process the produce. When it’s a second harvest that produced less, we can change the speed to be as efficient and use resources as wisely as possible. Stepper motors can’t do that.
If you have servos that aren’t working as efficiently as possible, it might be because it needs a repair of a crucial part. Typically servos shut down when they can’t work correctly because they need all parts to communicate and corporate to work the best they can. Call us when you’re having servo issues.