We get calls from people who have been surprised by their Rexroth servo motors. The super-critical machine at the center of the line grinds to a halt, they follow the cable back to a cabinet, they open the cabinet, and see the word “Indramat” or “Rexroth” or “IndraDrive” on a servo. If it’s a legacy unit, they may stare at it in wonderment before googling for help, because there definitely isn’t an app for that.
But finding a servo motor in a factory is not a surprise. Unfamiliar brand names and mystifying error codes might be a surprise, but not the sheer presence of a servo motor. We expect to see servos in factories.
Here are some surprising places to find servos:
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- At the ballet, as in the Rexroth set up of the Bolshoi Ballet’s stage machinery.
- In cameras, where very small servos automatically focus the lens.
- In photovoltaic arrays — solar panels — where servos all panels to adjust to the angle of the sun with precision that increases efficiency.
- Automatic doors in hospitals and malls, where servos keep doors opening as needed in response to a button or a sensor.
- In your home movie set up, where a servo opens the drawer for your Blu-Ray disk.
- In the movies, where animatronic puppets get their lifelike movements from multiple servos.
- In medicine, where servos assist surgeons in robotic surgery.
- In defense, not only for unmanned vehicles, but also in weapons where a silent mechanical movement is essential.
- In biomedical applications for scanning and other precision diagnostic functions.
- Semi-conductor applications use nano servo motors.
- In vehicles from remote control cars to commercial airplanes.
- In calibration equipment.
They started out on steamboats, but servo motors now power almost every kind of motion control imaginable.
As for the surprising servo motor you found in a cabinet, we can help you with that. We’re servo motor experts, specializing in legacy and new Rexroth electric motion control, including not only servos but also drives and controls.