David Pearson, Technical Director at Anglia provides an insight into the key application trends and some of the innovative products and solutions from Analog Devices which can help developers meet the requirement and scope of Intelligent Motion Control designs for Industry 4.0.
One of the current megatrends is the move to smart automation in manufacturing, whilst automation is not a new idea it has been around since machines where invented at the beginning of the first industrial revolution which allowed producers to speed up manufacturing and improve quality and repeatability of processes. What we are seeing now in the fourth industrial revolution, more commonly known as Industry 4.0, is these automated machines becoming more connected and smarter than ever before. The decentralisation and sharing of information between manufacturing equipment and processes will create an enormous advantage in efficiency, adaptability, reliability and technological advancement.
Using superior innovation and premier technology platforms, Analog Devices are already accelerating the move to Industry 4.0 and increasing productivity on factory floors, enabling personalised output with flexible manufacturing, and producing intelligent edge-based data insights that reduce raw material usage and energy consumption. Analog Devices are collaborating with customers across the whole spectrum of manufacturing to co-create easily adopted solutions, enable digital transformation, and build a sustainable industrial future.
Analog Devices have a wide range of products and solutions ideal for Industry 4.0, these cover all the key application areas found within a factory setting, including Condition-based Monitoring (CbM), Intelligent Motion Control, Power Supplies, Robotics, Functional Safety, Factory & Process Control and Industrial Connectivity (wired and wireless).
Intelligent Motion Control Trends
Four key growth drivers are accelerating intelligent motion control: reduced energy consumption, agile production, digital transformation, and the move toward new service-based business models (which are based on reducing downtime and increased asset utilization in smart manufacturing).
Reduced Energy Consumption
Up to 70% of the electricity used in industry is consumed by electric motors. Intelligent motion solutions can deliver significant reductions in energy consumption by moving more applications from fixed speed motors to high efficiency motors and variable speed drives, in part driven by energy efficiency regulations.
Agile Production
As industries are adapting to keep up with consumer demand and changing buyer behaviours, agile production—based on reconfigurable production lines—is required to deliver more customization and faster turnaround times. Agile production increases resilience in a time of disruption, enables a faster response to changing customer demands giving manufacturers a competitive edge.
Digital Transformation
Motion data and insights from advanced sensing are now more accessible than ever before, as motion assets are networked together to share data in real-time. Powerful cloud-computing and Artificial Intelligence (AI) can analyse this data to optimize manufacturing flows and monitor the current state of health of the assets across the entire installation.
Intelligent motion applications are integrating condition monitoring capabilities to implement real-time monitoring of the assets’ health to eliminate unplanned downtime, deliver higher levels of productivity and asset utilization. This creates new business model opportunities for deployed assets with predictive maintenance, service-based contracts. We already see this being used across a wide range of applications.
Motion Control Solutions
Analog Devices are focused on delivering the highest system performance and leading integration across multiple technologies. This is combined with extensive motion control, system-level knowledge to provide customers with unique system solutions enabling precise motion control, accurate position and velocity tracking, and seamless connectivity, with an increased focus on safety, robustness, reliability, and higher efficiency solutions.
Figure 1 – Typical Motion Control System
In Fig 1 we see a typical example of a motion control system, several different technologies are seamlessly integrated in the application to deliver real value to the end user.
Precision Measurement
Analog Devices have the industry’s leading portfolio of precision A/D converters featuring low latency, high accuracy solutions which enable precise current and position measurement for superior motion control performance. This unrivalled portfolio features leading ac and dc performance, power, speed and size, with products ranging from 8-bit to 32-bit resolution. The products have been designed with ease of use in mind enabling customers to meet their end design objective more quickly, at a component and signal chain level. Covering a range of architectures, SAR - Successive Approximation ADCs, Σ-Δ - Sigma Delta Modulators and Isolated ADCs. Products include 4-20mA input A/D converters, Isolated A/D Converters, Multiplexed A/D Converters, Precision Signal Chain μModule® Solutions, Simultaneous Sampling A/D Converters and Single Channel A/D Converters. A comprehensive suite of tools is available to simplify the design process from the initial selection to prototyping.
Industrial Ethernet
High speed, interoperable Ethernet solutions from Analog Devices enable real-time connectivity for time sensitive networking (TSN) and advanced system-level insights.
Analog Devices ADI Chronous™ is a leading portfolio of edge-to-enterprise Industrial Ethernet connectivity solutions, specifically designed to accelerate the path to Industry 4.0. Leveraging deep domain expertise and advanced technologies to connect the industrial devices and networks of the future it offers scalable ethernet, timed to perfection. Analog Devices trusted solutions ensure critical data is reliably delivered throughout the application, ensuring seamless connectivity and operational efficiency. The ADI Chronous solutions stand up in the toughest, time-critical environments and opens the door to gigabit and 10BASE-T1L connectivity and communications infrastructure which is the backbone of the connected enterprise vision and presents many key opportunities on the path to Industry 4.0. As industrial networks pivot from legacy fieldbus and 4 mA to 20 mA connectivity to Industrial Ethernet, multiple challenges emerge during the design and implementation phases. Developing future-proofed, robust, and scalable Industrial Ethernet solutions that can support emerging technology like 10BASE-T1L, single pair Ethernet, time sensitive networking (TSN) or industry-leading low latency gigabit solutions is a time consuming and resource intensive task. It requires a new skillset and knowledge base to architect systems that ensure data integration, synchronization, and system interoperability. Anglia can help you navigate this task, as well as assist in the design and development of seamless, robust Ethernet solutions from Analog Devices.
Isolation and Interface Technology
Analog Devices isolation technology provides robust safety isolation protecting people and assets from high voltage and disruptive electromagnetic interference. They have a wide range of digital interface and digital isolators covering the industry’s field bus and peripheral communications standards. Digital isolators, isolated transceivers, isolated A/D converters and isolated gate drivers use Analog Devices award winning iCoupler® and isoPower® technologies which provide isolation solutions without many of the constraints found in traditional optocouplers. Products are suitable for use in a wide range of applications including interface devices, keypad controllers, level translators, high voltage protection products (channel protection, fault protection, overvoltage protection), and latch-up proof switches and multiplexers.
Magnetic Sensing
Analog Devices compact magnetic sensing technology provides robust and accurate position sensing for superior motion control. The range of magnetic field sensors combine integrated bulk Hall cell technology and instrumentation circuitry to minimize temperature related drifts associated with silicon Hall cell characteristics. For example, the ADA4570 integrated AMR angle sensor combines signal conditioning with differential outputs and allows high precision contactless angular measurements up to 180° with a typical angular error of just ±0.1°. The architecture maximizes the advantages of a monolithic implementation while allowing sufficient versatility to meet varied application requirements with a minimum number of components.
Power Management
Compact, high efficiency, high power density solutions from Analog Devices provide robust and reliable power for motion control needs. With a huge portfolio of power management ICs and power modules, Analog Devices provide the foundation for powering todays and tomorrow’s innovations across all markets. Their high-performance power management solutions meet stringent power requirements with leading-edge design and packaging technologies, including unmatched power densities, ultralow noise technology, and superior reliability. These features ensure systems operate at their optimal efficiency, speed, and power levels, while increasing feature density and reducing cost of ownership. These products are supported by LTspice®, the industry’s most comprehensive start-to-finish power design tool suite, along with highly configurable power interconnect solutions. Analog Devices low complexity power management solutions help designers accelerate time-to-market while delivering best-in-class performance.
Machine Health with Condition-Based Monitoring
Analog Devices advanced machine heath monitoring solutions and platforms reduce system downtime and maintenance costs. Condition-based monitoring (CbM) is a predictive maintenance strategy that continuously monitors the condition of assets using different types of sensors, the data extracted from these sensors is used to monitor assets in real time. The collected data can help manufacturers increase throughput and asset utilization by reducing maintenance costs and asset downtime. CbM can be used to establish trends, predict failure, calculate the lifetime of an asset, and increase safety in manufacturing plants. Analog Devices’ deep domain knowledge across sensing, signal processing, communications, power management, and system design considerations, combined with their AI sensing and interpreting platform at the edge, enables customers to deploy new condition monitoring solutions faster and extract more value, with access to higher quality data and insights.
Analog Devices also have complete, system-level solutions, such as the Voyager 3 wireless vibration monitoring platform that integrates a 3-axis ultra-low power MEMS accelerator, low power 16-bit ADC and ultra-low power MCU with a SmartMESH wireless radio. Solutions like these provide designers the technology and insights to create, new, high value, predictive maintenance service offerings for deployed equipment.
Design support
Anglia offers support for customer designs with free evaluation kits, demonstration boards and samples of Analog Devices products via the EZYsample service which is available to all registered Anglia Live account customers.
Anglia’s engineering team are also on hand to support designers with intelligent motion control designs and can offer advice and support at component and system level. This expertise is available to support customers with all aspects of their designs, offering hands on design support along with access to Analog Devices vast resource of technical application notes and reference designs.
Scan the QR code or visit www.anglia-live.com to see the full range of Analog Devices products available from Anglia.
