With a ruggedised and fully sealed design, Aerotech’s ALS5000 series linear stages combine direct-drive motor technology and linear motion guide bearings, for high precision positioning of large payloads in harsh production environments. The range is available in a choice of widths: The ALS5000 series (279 mm wide) has seven travel range options from 200 mm to 1000 mm. The ALS500WB series (571 mm wide) has five travel range options 450 mm to 1000 mm. The wide base version is designed to facilitate X-Y mounting and accommodate larger offset stage loading. It also includes a dual linear motor drive to provide the extra power needed for high speed positioning.
The ALS5000 design allows its use in the most demanding production application environments such as ceramic scribing or laser machining. Protecting the stage from hot sparks and debris, the hard top and integral metal waycovers have a Teflon impregnated hard-coat finish for maximum durability and scratch resistance. A unique, tensioned side-strap seal allows free travel of the tabletop whilst maintaining a tight seal - further protecting the stage bearing, motor and encoder. An optional air-purge feature allows air or specialist gases to be forced into the interior of the stage causing a positive pressure and ensuring that the stage is totally sealed against particle ingress. Both stage width designs include ample mounting holes that can be accessed without dismantling for straightforward installation and a fully integrated chain type cable management system is included.
The combination of direct-drive, cog-free brushless servo motors and choice of standard precision or high accuracy linear encoders provide the ALS5000 series with smooth and precise, zero backlash motion that is ideally suited to tightly synchronised multi-axis positioning. Also providing excellent in-position stability, the friction and cog-free servo motor and feedback system offers extremely long life when compared to ballscrew driven stages.
The comparison with ballscrew driven stage designs also illustrates that the ALS5000 offers a lower profile and a more compact design with a smaller footprint. This comparison can be extended to cost of ownership factors such as much improved throughput, less maintenance and a greatly increased working life – these features combine to make direct-drive systems the naturally preferred choice.
With a maximum speed of 2 m/s and with load acceleration of up to 30 m/s2 the ALS5000 series is available with a best resolution of just 0.001 µm with the high precision encoder option and 0.005 µm for the standard precision encoder. Nominal accuracy is ±40.0 µm for the 1 metre travel version, however stages can be supplied with the HALAR interferometer calibrated accuracy option where all travel ranges can achieve up to ±1.0 µm in combination with Aerotech’s A3200 Automation Platform motion control system. Stage repeatability is up to ± 0.5 µm, uncalibrated straightness and flatness for the standard stage is 2 µm per 25 mm of travel with the HALSF option available to provide much higher calibrated values if required. Equally impressive specifications for pitch yaw and roll are available and as with all Aerotech mechanical systems, are covered in detail in the product sections at Aerotech’s website.
Aerotech manufactures a wide range of servo amplifiers and advanced motion controllers for complete positioning solutions across manufacturing and research applications. These include the A3200 Digital Automation Platform with up to 32 axes of Firewire interfaced high performance motion and machine control. This software based control system combines motion and optional HMI, PLC and vision control modules and is programmable in a choice of languages including Aerotech’s own AEROBasic, RS274 G-code, C, C++, VisualBasic, Delphi and Labview. The Firewire distributed control architecture typically delivers fully deterministic motion updates to Aerotech’s Ndrive servo drives – available in a wide choice of power ratings. Independently processing position velocity and current loops at closure rates of up to 20kHz, the combination of A3200 and Ndrives avoids the processing bottleneck associated with hardware-based single processor control systems. An additional Ethernet 10/100 Base T interface may be used to add third party I/O and PLC’s.
Every Aerotech system comes fully tested and includes motor power and encoder cables plus performance and calibration related documents. To make commissioning straightforward, each system includes a delivery pack with interconnection drawings to help integrators with their own system documentation and all motor parameter set-up data for the system configuration. Full product training and comprehensive on-line technical support is also included making the true cost of ownership of Aerotech positioning systems extremely competitive.