Developments of Prototype Automatic Transportation Lines with a Direct Electric Drive

Abstract

The increasingly demanding requirements for the production capacity, accuracy and repeatability of industrial production require the development of fully automated transportation lines in which a workpiece is mounted once and passes all stages of the technological process. To solve these problems, the leading manufacturers of machinery construction equipment offer, instead of conveying systems with belt or roller drive, modular automatic transportation lines based on direct drives with permanent-magnet linear synchronous machines. A specific feature of using a linear machine in a transportation line is an inverted mutual layout of the primary part (the armature) and the secondary part (the magnetic way) in which the magnetic way segment moves over a number of modules distributed along the line with a set of armatures and sensors controlled by individual servo amplifiers interconnected by a digital bus. With such solution, a workpiece is attached to the passive moving part that does not require the connection of electrical cables – to ensure its free and independent movement within the entire production line. The modularity of the design provides flexibility of the transportation systems. The article gives a review of solutions offered by various manufacturers, shows the specific features of using linear synchronous machines and sensors in such systems, and proposes the authors’ own developments of prototype transportation lines.