Oriental Motor UK Ltd – AZ: Designed for efficiency

August 24, 2022

The characteristics of Oriental Motor’s AZ series stepper motors mean that automation system designers can reduce costs while increasing efficiency.

One of the most important challenges for designers of automation systems today is the reduced available space for production plants. The pursuit of increased productivity seems to be at odds with the reduced available workspaces.

Within the AZ stepper motor series with both AC and DC input driver models, Oriental Motor’s DC powered models in particular have been designed to be compact and efficient.

They are engineered to deliver positional accuracy in a form factor suitable for both conveyor belt production lines and automated warehouse equipment.

Based on stepper motor technology, the AZ series does not require a PID (Proportional-Integral-Derivative) loop for position accuracy. This not only reduces costs, but also allows the modules to be easily maneuvered to accommodate changes in production line requirements.

Further cost savings are achieved as the AZ series eliminates the need for commonly used external sensors such as the home sensor and end sensor. In addition to savings in the costs of the required sensors, there are no sensor-based system downtimes due to the ingress of water, oil or dust.

The subsequent reduction in downtime contributes to improved productivity. Eliminating these sensors also brings benefits including reduced electrical design time, wiring and maintenance costs.

The AZ series does not require a battery, which contributes to the compact body and a compact control box when using multiple devices.

Microstepping increases positional accuracy, delivering up to 10,000 steps per revolution. This precision ensures a wide range of acceleration and deceleration and also eliminates the need for a PID loop – traditionally used for position accuracy – further contributing to cost efficiency in the automation system.

Typical applications for the AZ Series are automated sensor line assembly robots used to transport products between stations along the production line.

For today’s networked automation, the AZ Series supports a wide range of communication protocols to operate with a very wide range of PLCs.

In addition to EtherCAT, which is particularly popular in automation systems and multi-axis systems that require true linear interpolation, the stepper motors support EtherNet IP and Profinet, as well as CANOpen, Modbus RTU, Mechatrolink 2 and Mechatrolink 3 IP drivers.

Oriental Motor also offers a range of EtherCAT-compatible multi-axis drivers for the AZ Series, including two-, three-, and four-axis driver connector models for the AZ Series DC-input stepper motors and electric actuators.


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