Smart motors will be the main market in the future

Smart motors will be the main market in the future

Industry 4.0 (Industry4.0) is the German government's "High Technology Strategy 2020" concluded that one of the projects, the project aims to use information and communication technology and network technology, the manufacturing industry to the intelligent transformation, Industry 4.0 has risen to Germany's national strategy.

"Industry 4.0" is divided into two major themes, one is "smart factory", focusing on intelligent production systems and processes, as well as the completion of networked distributed production equipment, meaning that the equipment can communicate with each other, and can be in the intelligent networking of the production process Independent operation of the second is "intelligent production", the first touches on the entire enterprise production logistics, human-machine interaction and the use of 3D technology in the industrial production process.

IHS senior analyst Zhou Wanmu pointed out that Germany put forward Industry 4.0, the United States put forward advanced manufacturing national strategic program, China is also promoting the transformation and upgrading of the traditional manufacturing industry, in this context, the traditional motor and motor control industry is also changing, the motor control chip also puts forward new needs.

Analyst Zhou Wanmu believes that the primary trend contains the following three aspects:

Distributed motor control system and integrated motor control product trends

The number of axes of motors in a single mechanical device is becoming more, multi-axis control is increasingly used in packaging machinery, electronic assembly machinery, food and beverage machinery, robots and printing machinery. In order to meet the needs of small batch, customized and flexible processing, customers need to sensitively adjust the number of axes of the motor control, the motor control system is required to be more open, can be repeatedly programmed.

In addition, modern factory production lines are becoming more and more complex, such as automotive manufacturing, packaging, food and beverage, warehousing and logistics lines are using hundreds of inverters, servos and motors to control the material activity, these production lines on the distributed motor control system demand is relatively large. Once the motor control system will have a central electrical control cabinet to install the motor drive, and distributed motor control system can provide a set of compact modular solution to help simplify wiring, shorten the commissioning time and reduce the need for rated cabinet space, less cable connection can also reduce the interference, improve the reliability of the production line, no need to use the electrical control cabinet so that the motor can be quickly connected to industrial Ethernet.

Distributing motor control systems also means integrating motor control products, such as motors and motor drives, motor controllers and PLCs, and motor controllers and drives. Motor, motor drive and its control system is highly integrated, so that the three planning, manufacturing and operation are tightly integrated, compared with the traditional power transmission system, they are smaller, lighter weight, higher power density.

IHS senior analyst Zhou Wanmu said that the concept of integration does not just stay in the motor, motor drive and motor manipulator, but also includes the integration of the entire motor system. Siemens is promoting IDS (IntegratedDriveSystem) integrated drive system consists of two levels, the first level is horizontal integration, including motor manipulator, motor drive, motor and reducer integration of the second level is vertical integration, is the motor system into the entire industrial control system, also known as TIA.

Motor control of the integration trend so that customers on the motor control MCU, FPGA and DSP function of the requirements of the increasingly high, and at the same time require semiconductor chip manufacturers can also provide integrated solutions, in a single chip to integrate more functions, I / O, drive, control algorithms and industrial Ethernet modules.

Intelligent, networked and long-distance control trend

Intelligent, networked and long-distance control of the entire motor control system will be the trend. Motor control system is not only a device for transforming and transmitting energy, but also a channel for transmitting and communicating information, the future industrial motor system is not only an actuator, but also an organic part of the whole factory system and power utilization monitoring point. ihs high-grade analyst zhou wanmu cited, for example, than Siemens, ABB produces some motors, can actively collect and record motor voltage, current, temperature rise, vibration, and so on. Voltage, current, temperature rise, oscillation and other conditions change, and through the Ethernet will be sent to the control center in real time data for the motor's operating conditions for detection and fault diagnosis, so that the operator, regardless of where they can visit the parameters, conditions and diagnostic information, and can be parameterized.

8-bit MCU because of cheap, stable function, the use of the scale is extremely broad, such as signal detection, LED lighting control, power conversion control and BLDC motor control, these applications in the 8-bit MCU is now enough. And motor system active fault alarm, long-distance monitoring and long-distance diagnosis and debugging needs, will use more and more features more, more powerful MCU, DSP and FPGA. 8-bit MCU in the inverter control, servo motor control, power and power monitoring, more and more of the use of Ethernet and other modern industrial environments have encountered a bottleneck. In addition, the price of 32-bit MCU is further low, 8-bit MCU and 32-bit MCU price difference is narrowing, so the future of the motor control system will use more and more 32-bit MCU. In addition, the long-distance motor temperature detection, abnormal vibration detection and current and voltage monitoring needs will be invented for the mimic chip to create more opportunities for the shopping mall.

Motor system energy saving trend

Energy saving of motor system is also a major trend. In order to improve the energy efficiency level, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued a motor energy efficiency improvement program to complete the motor product upgrading, 50% of the low-voltage three-phase cage asynchronous motor products, 40% of the high-voltage motor products to reach the high-efficiency motor energy-efficiency standards and norms cumulative implementation of high-efficiency motors 170 million kilowatts, screening of low-efficiency motors 160 million kilowatts, the implementation of energy-saving motor system technology 100 million kilowatts, the implementation of screening of high-efficiency remanufacturing of motors 20 million kilowatts.

But just replace the general motor with a high-efficiency motor to improve the energy efficiency of the entire motor system is not obvious, the energy saving of the entire motor system is the real energy saving. Therefore, frequency converter, servo, inverter and special motor drive used in a large number of fans, pumps, compressors, elevators, welding machines, electric car motors, air conditioning compressors, washing machine motors and refrigerator compressors. Frequency converter is the main energy-saving motor system, energy saving is the primary performance in the use of fans, pumps, the use of frequency converter, can be reduced by decreasing the frequency of the power supply to reduce the speed of the pump or fan, followed by the decline in speed, the power will be a rapid decline.

At the same time, the frequency converter is generally used to choose the alternating - direct - alternating frequency power supply mode, communicating asynchronous motor to absorb the lagging reactive power, through the frequency converter power supply, the power factor of the power grid, there is a certain degree of improvement, the overall savings of a portion of the power grid transmission process of loss of electrical energy.

The IPM modules, IGBTs and MOSFETs in the frequency converters, servo drives, inverters and specialized manipulators play a key role in saving energy and reducing consumption. Customer requirements for these power devices are also more and more, such as the requirement for lower product costs, more compact package size, better heat dissipation function, the diversity of power devices also put forward requirements, such as low-power devices, compact planning of high-power devices, low-voltage high-power devices, high-current high-voltage devices and so on.

(Source Motor Today)