Positioning drive for manufacturing systems.

The EMCA positioning drive from Festo, consists of a maintenance-free and wear-resistant brushless DC motor with integrated power and control electronics. The integrated drive system is compact, avoids long motor cables, improves electromagnetic compatibility and reduces installation workload and space requirements, while built-in monitoring functions ensure safety and reliability.

Designed for industrial use in demanding manufacturing environments, applications include machines, devices and systems used in materials transport and conveying, printing, packaging and labelling, as well as textiles and electronics manufacturing. Its compact and high performance design have been recognised with a Product Design Award from one of the world's most celebrated and valued design competitions, the iF Design Awards.

The EMCA is equipped with a 24 V DC power supply and senses absolute position using a single-turn encoder as standard, or optionally via a multi-turn displacement encoder with buffering. An integrated holding brake is optional, as are a range of external gear units. Free to download Festo Configuration Tool (FCT) software makes parameterisation and commissioning quick and easy via an Ethernet interface, with 64 freely programmable position sets. The EMCA can be controlled via fieldbuses including CANopen, Ethernet/IP and I/O-Interface, with EtherCAT and PROFINET to follow, making it suitable for integration into many applications.

Available in two motor lengths and power classes, the EMCA can deliver peak torque of up to 0.91 Nm, has a maximum rotational speed of 3,500 RPM and can reach peak power output of up to 200 W. The motor housing provides IP54 degree of protection as standard, with IP65 available as an option, for direct installation in the system. The EMCA also supports the safety function, "safe torque off (STO)", ensuring there is no risk to the user’s system from the motor continuing to rotate in case of emergency.

“The addition of the EMCA to our portfolio means that engineers can source an even broader range of automation packages from Festo – from gear units, to electro-mechanical axes and compete handling systems,” says Steve Sands, product manager at Festo. “For example, the EMCA can be easily integrated with our very wide range of electro-mechanical axes as part of a complete system. At the recent Hannover Fair, we showed just such a solution featuring our CPX controller as a demonstration of an Industry 4.0-ready parallel kinematic high speed robotic handling system.”

“This award-winning integrated positioning drive delivers an ideal solution for industrial manufacturing. It’s easy to mount and set up, offers a high class of protection against water and dirt, and combines a maintenance-free, wear-resistant EC motor with integrated power and control electronics, all within a rugged, compact housing.”

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