System offers high-speed sorting
A
SMAC Europe product story
Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team
Oct 22, 2007
SMAC's MCA system runs on high-precision linear guides with static breakaway forces that are 1% that of a pneumatic air cylinder.
SMAC has released a moving coil actuator (MCA) system designed to sort and reject parts at ultra-high speeds.
Conventional pneumatic cylinders contain a number of static and dynamic sealing arrangements.
Due to the use of compressed air the operational efficiency of these seals deteriorates considerably over time.
This leads to friction and sticking, which causes the pneumatic system to slow, particularly when the cylinder cycle time is varied.
The longer the cylinder system sits without moving the higher the static friction breakaway force required.
It is not uncommon for this variation to be up to 50ms.
Conventional pneumatic systems are also highly dependent on the speed and reaction time of the solenoid valve used.
General industrial DC solenoid valves have a variance of +/-10ms.
With AC solenoid valves this variance often doubles.
Hence the total variation in cycle time can be up to 50ms.
The SMAC moving coil actuator (MCA) solution eliminates these problems by running on high-precision linear guides with static breakaway forces that are 1% that of a pneumatic air cylinder.
Therefore total cycle time variation is under 1ms.
The average lifetime of a conventional pneumatic cylinder is about 10 million cycles in applications where controlled impact and end of stroke cushioning is required.
The MCA will last around 100 million cycles in similar applications.
Dampening and cushioning are servo-controlled.
It is the coil within the actuator that provides the programmed reduction in speed.
The SMAC actuators are low wattage devices - typically less than 2A at 24 or 48V.
This minimises heat generation.
Pneumatic systems are inherently noisy and extremely inefficient.
When pneumatic cylinders perform a high number of cycles in an enclosed space the noise and heat generated is significant as the compressed air is exhausted to atmosphere.
Whilst a degree of crude silencing and muffling can be applied the noise of the cylinder impacting at the end of stroke cannot.
The MCA is comparatively quiet.
No wasted energy is exhausted and the heat generated is relatively extremely low (5 to 10C).
MCAs are suitable for applications such as packaging, bottling, labelling, filling, parts handling, measuring and quality control.
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