Pulse Drive Technologies Replacing Servos and Pneumatics

By Tim Barnes, Director of Business Development, Insight Automation

 

Up until now, when a company needed to create a complex system for material handling requiring accurate positioning, it had to use a servo motor. Servo drive motors provide unheralded 

accuracy—down to a hundred-thousandths of an inch or less. However, that accuracy comes at a cost, literally. The average servo motor can cost thousands of dollars.

 

But what if you don't need unheralded accuracy? Fortunately, there's now a new, less expensive alternative: PulseRoller motorized roller and Pulse GearDrive technology. 

 

These aren't your father's motorized rollers. Today's rollers are capable of handling most material handling and some machinery applications. While they can't provide the finite accuracy of a servo motor, they can be accurate down to fractions of a millimeter. 

 

More importantly, the cost savings is substantial. A motorized drive roller or a GearDrive motor can cost a few hundred dollars compared to a couple thousand for a servo drive motor and control.Here are some examples of how motorized drive rollers are currently being used in industry.

 

A soft goods company needed to innovate its sorter technology. Most sorters handle totes or boxes. This sorter needed to handle items from cardboard boxes to bags to soft items such as t-shirts. The company first tried servo technology but found them to be too cumbersome and expensive. That's when they tried motorized drive roller technology. With the help of PulseRoller, they were able to utilize a Dual-Drive motor, with two motors in the same roller tube, that work in tandem to control a telescoping table mechanism. 

 

As merchandise goes down a plastic table top chain, the telescoping table retracts and drops the package onto a lower conveyor that then sorts it to the left or right, or into a sort bin. 

 

The next challenge was how to control the table and conveyor. The solution was to make each sorter a stand-alone controls package with its own controller. Each ConveyLinx controller was custom programmed with the necessary logic to operate its assigned sorter unit. Like a Lego set, the integrator can intermix each of these controller units or put them end to end. Combined with the sorter controller software, which handles system configurations and diagnostics, the sorter was now able to sort any type of merchandise or package the company needed. Each item is tracked to within less than a millimeter which allows items to be diverted without delaying the rest of the items behind it. 

 

The price was what the company needed as well. The new sorter drives controls were under $2,000 compared to the more than $8,000 prototype built with frequency servo drives.

 

Most pharmacy fulfillment systems contain loud pneumatics, which uses pressurized air, to move parts of the system. Control and speed are harder to manage with pneumatics. 

 

That's why an automation company chose to create its new sophisticated pharmacy fulfillment system with mostly robotics and motorized drive roller and GearDrive technologies. The new system outperforms current pharmacy fulfillment systems by more than 200 percent.

 

All motion in the system is performed with PulseRoller motorized drive rollers and GearDrive units. A motorized drive roller or GearDrive is more flexible than pneumatics, as you can better control motion and speed, as well as gain feedback of actual position anywhere along the motion path. 

 

Motorized drive roller and GearDrive technology are used to handle and dispense every material that makes up the prescription products—bottles, pills, liquids, labels, paperwork, and pre-packaged prescriptions. 

 

For example, as a prescription nears completion, paperwork detailing the use and side effects of the medication must be printed and inserted into the package in a specific way. Motorized drive rollers are used to move and fold pages into the necessary format as well as insert them into the package. 

 

This new pharmacy fulfillment system requires about one-third of the staff as current systems. Creating such a self-contained system required custom engineering. Many of the motorized drive rollers had attachments such as special cams welded to the rollers' tube to move mechanisms up and down in a controlled fashion.

 

Despite the customization, the pharmacy fulfillment system still came under budget thanks to the performance and cost-savings of using today's modern, motorized drive rollers.

 

Less expensive alternatives, such as motorized drive rollers, GearDrives, and ConveyLinx, for creating material handling systems helps lower overall costs and increase the speed to a return on investment. Pulse Drive Technologies and controls offer accurate control, but most importantly, they offer flexibility with both the engineering design and the budget.For more information on Pulse Drive Technologies or ConveyLinx visit www.pulseroller.com, email sales@pulseroller.com, or call +1-800-764-6356.