What is a high-performance servo that reduces costs while increasing speed and reducing vibration in automatic sorting systems?

We are starting to build an automated sorting system for mail order sales, but speed is an issue

Company A is a company that builds systems for conveyors and various other logistics and transport equipment. The company has expanded its business by targeting a specific market, but recently it was aiming to enter a new market in order to strengthen its management base.
The company focused on the internet mail order industry for general consumers, which has seen remarkable growth in recent years, and began developing an automatic sorting system for the mail order industry.

However, shortly after starting development, Company A ran into a technical challenge: Because mail order sales to general consumers involve the handling of a wide variety of products and a large number of small lots, they needed sorting performance that was faster than ever before.

Induction motors have their limits, and servos would increase costs dramatically...

Mr. F, a manager in the company's development department, had this to say:
"The mail-order company has a large volume of goods, so we aimed to improve the system speed to increase our sorting capacity. Since most of the goods are relatively light, motor capacity was not an issue, but with the current induction motor, there was a limit to how quickly we could improve the sorting speed, and we were unable to meet our requirements."

Additionally, induction motors have a narrow speed control range, which causes vibrations during acceleration and deceleration, which can damage the load.

"The manufacturer we first consulted proposed a system ranging from a high-performance controller to a servo motor. The servo motor was a multi-rotation absolute encoder type that could detect absolute position. We found that by switching to a servo system, we could increase the speed and reduce vibration of the automatic sorting system, but it would mean a significant increase in costs compared to the previous system. The mail order industry is very cost-conscious, so unfortunately we were unable to adopt this proposal." (Mr. F)

Technical proposals to minimize costs by installing high-performance servo motors

Mr. F, who was searching for a solution, consulted with a SANYO DENKI CO., LTD. sales representative who was visiting Company A regularly for another project about these issues. The sales representative then listened to the current issues and system requirements in detail, and later proposed that "neither a high-performance controller nor a multi-rotation absolute encoder is necessary." Mr. F, who was very interested, decided to hear more about it.

The first thing that Mr. F noticed was that it didn't require a high-performance controller.

"SANYO DENKI CO., LTD. 's proposal was to reuse our existing controller and that an incremental encoder would be sufficient. We thought that we needed a multi-turn absolute encoder to detect the position when the system is stopped, and that we also needed a high-performance controller for that. However, when we tested the actual machine, we confirmed that we could achieve the target sorting capacity.
The proposed motor has a maximum speed of 6000 min-1, which is a significant speed improvement compared to the current motor. It also has excellent vibration control during acceleration and deceleration, and we found that it can sufficiently suppress vibration even when the sorting system is accelerated." (Mr. F)

We have succeeded in making the machine twice as fast as before while keeping costs down, and have achieved a major improvement in sorting performance!

Thus, Company A officially decided to adopt SANYO DENKI CO., LTD. servo motors.
"When we evaluated the motor, we received a sample within a few days. Even after we decided to adopt the motor, we were able to get it to market quickly thanks to the launch support provided by technical services and the support from our sales staff." (Mr. F)

The new product, released a few months later, was approximately twice as fast as the previous model, successfully improving the system's speed and suppressing vibrations, resulting in a major improvement in sorting performance.
Mr. F. said:

"We are grateful for the system proposal and technical support that enabled us to realize our required specifications with optimal cost performance. We expect that SANYO DENKI CO., LTD. will continue to be a strong ally as we aim to develop high-performance systems that meet customer needs."

release date: 2019-02-02 00:00