TRINAMIC and the Institute of Control Engineering develop method for energy efficient motor control.
TRINAMIC and the Institute of Control Engineering of the Braunschweig Technical University, are working together in the TRICEOS project, a novel method for energy-efficient control of stepper motors without position sensors. The project is supported by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) with 700,000€.
Especially for applications that require a high degree of precision and reliability —such as biotechnology, semiconductor manufacturing and medical technology—stepper motors are good solution. They are robust and require no position control, and by their design, offer high precision and repeatability. A challenge, however, is the increased power consumption in commercial, unregulated controls with respect to controlled drives.
IFR and TRINAMIC are cooperating in the TRICEOS project to develop and test a novel and robust sensorless design that will offer a more efficient stepper motor operation. In this new mode of operation, rotor position will be self-detected with high-accuracy, which will enable optimum use of the available torque. As part of the project, TRINAMIC will test an implementation of an integrated motor driver in a modern, extremely robust and temperature-insensitive semiconductor process at semiconductor manufacturer XFAB, based in Erfurt. An equivalent fully integrated and self-sensing motor control solution in a single chip does not yet exist.
TRINAMIC is the technology leader in the control of small electric motors and already offers patented control methods that allow integrated circuits without position sensors to control engines under many operating conditions with greater energy efficiency and reliability.
IFR is dedicated to the control of typically larger engines, such as those used in mechanical engineering. In this field the use of intelligent methods can save a lot of energy and bring significant benefits to the application, and sensorless methods are increasingly desired to avoid the requirement of trouble-prone encoders.