Here are two examples of AMC’s use of clever customized designs to provide high value solutions that meet tough specifications.

AMC custom drive for fan motor control

This customer turned to us after a consultant was unable to deliver a design for a very challenging application. The customer was a motor manufacturer designing a totally enclosed integrated motor/drive to cool an engine compartment. The fan needed to turn on at 95 °C (203 °F) operate up to 125 °C (257 °F). Most drive manufacturers don’t even rate their drives for storage and transport at such high temperatures!

AMC did a new layout of a standard drive design, upgraded a few critical components, and added software to interface with the customer’s J1939 vehicle network. The result was a drive that fit into a tight spot, delivered low overall cost, and rescued a project that had gotten well behind schedule.

Dual AZ drives with customer-specific mounting card

This customer uses AMC drives to run the azimuth and elevation motors on a highly precise camera mount. Their previous supplier had reliability problems caused by inconsistent assembly and layout. After testing AMC’s standard drives, they determined that AMC’s AZ series of drives provided excellent performance and reliability, but that interfacing them with their existing system would be a challenge.

AMC responded by customizing the heat sinks on the AZ servo drive and creating a custom interface card with relay I/O and the customer’s specified connectors. The resulting product acts as a direct drop-in, added no additional parts cost, and lowered the customer’s costs thanks to reduced assembly costs and increased reliability.

The machine uses two Galil motion controllers. A DMC-2183 eight axis motion controller handles motion control for the X, Y, Z, and theta axes of the two robot arms. Each robot arm moves independently in its own X-Y-Z-Theta coordinate space. A DMC-2143 four axis controller handles the tube decapper module. Galil’s AMP-20440 “sandwich” servo drives are attached directly to motion controllers, which minimizes space, reduces wiring, and saves cost.

Galil’s user-friendly software tools allowed for fast and intuitive software development. The basic motion is programmed on the controller using Galil’s simple two-letter command language. A host PC with a touch screen is used as the GUI/HMI. The PC software is programmed in C#, so Galil’s .NET API was used for seamless communication with the motion controllers, executing the motion programs depending on the system’s state and reading status variables for display to the user.