A lot of our clients contact us because they’ve found a cabinet, possibly by tracking a cable from a broken piece of machinery to that cabinet, and upon opening it for the first time in human memory, they find a servo motor labeled “Indramat.” Googling the word tells them that Rexroth now owns Indramat, and that leads them to us.
The cabinet is usually pretty dusty, and sometimes the air conditioning in that cabinet has stopped, leaving the servo vulnerable to its worst enemy, heat.
Sometimes it’s worse. Sometimes the air conditioning in the cabinet fails and someone gets the bright idea to prop open the door, maybe adding a fan which will push in air laden with the second worst enemy, dirt. Those servos get to cope with both heat and dirt.
But Rexroth now makes servos that don’t need cabinets. So occasionally someone realizes that the servo is a Rexroth product, vaguely recalls hearing that Rexroth servos don’t require cabinets, and just takes the servo right out of the cabinet.
The servo is now defenseless against heat and dirt. The two greatest enemies of servos, in case you forgot that part.
Cabinet-free servos are indeed a thing now, and they may be the wave of the future. They allow a smaller footprint and greater flexibility in the agile new factory. They reduce costs and make decentralized control more practical, and they allow a more responsive approach to production, an unavoidable demand in today’s economic climate. They streamline production, too.
But you can’t get these benefits by taking a legacy servo out of its cabinet. Those motors need protection from heat and dirt, and an air-conditioned cabinet is the only way to provide that at the level required for optimum performance.
The bottom line is that the choice between cabinets and no cabinets isn’t a personal decorating decision. It’s a choice you have to make — or have made — when the servo is bought. If your facility has had a little failure in that area and is now looking at a legacy Rexroth servo that needs resuscitation, we can help. Call now for phone support, field support, and access to the largest selection of emergency replacement units in the nation.