The Advantages of Using Linear Servo Motors

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Hi, my name is Jack Marsh with Innovative IDM. Today I’d like to talk a little bit about the advantages of linear servo motors. A lot of people have never even heard of a linear motor and don’t know that that is. Well, a linear motor is the same thing as a rotary motor that’s cut and then rolled. There’s as many types of linear motors as there are rotary motors. The physics are the same, just the mechanical arrangement of the parts are a little different.

For example, linear motors you’ve probably experienced multiple times every day in your life. If you look at audio speakers, the motor that moves the speaker back and forth and generates vibrations is a linear motor. Just a different kind of linear motor than is typically used in industrial applications.

For example, if you take this rotary motor, slice it, and unroll it, you’re going to have windings on a part that can move back and forth over the top of a piece of steel that has magnets on it. That is a direct drive thrust producing device that eliminates all the mechanical components in the drive train that would ordinarily take this spinning motor shaft and translate that into linear motion and linear force.

By eliminating all those mechanical components, you eliminate all the wear in the drive train, the back lash, inaccuracies – all the things that degrade the performance of your positioning system.

So if you need micron level precision, extremely low friction motion, very high accuracy and reliability, or very high accelerations and velocities, a linear motor might be the perfect solution for you. What you don’t get is the mechanical advantage of say a gear box that you could put on the end of a rotary motor to multiply the torque output of the motor. So until someone invents the linear equivalent of that, maybe a lever box, we are stuck with the direct drive nature of the linear motor. And if you need more force, the cost goes up because you have to buy a larger motor. You can’t put a mechanical advantage device on it. But with that comes all of the advantages of speed and precision a linear motor can provide.

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