Onboard drive and control makes stepper motors “smart”

Stepper motors with integrated electronics simplify design and integration, improve efficiency, and reduce total cost of ownership.

Delta Line’s brushless DC motors with integrated drive and control electronics have provided machine builders with unprecedented design flexibility thanks to their compact size, high efficiency, and excellent reliability. And now, Delta Line has expanded its offering of motors with integrated electronics to include stepper motors.

These smart stepper motors eliminate the need for a separate drive and controller, providing a complete stepper motor solution in a single, easy-to-integrate device.

Delta Line’s ISI57 and ISI60 stepper motors with integrated electronics provide significant space savings, not only by doing away with the separate driver and controller, but also by eliminating the need to run motor power and feedback cables to an external controller. The significant reduction in cabling also simplifies integration and improves efficiency, reliability and electrical noise, which helps to keep encoder signals “clean,” free from electromagnetic interference.

The size 57 and size 60 stepper motors use stepless control technology for 65,536 steps per revolution and have torque ranges from 0.55 to 3.1 Nm. Encoder options for the ISI57 and ISI60 stepper motors with integrated electronics include magnetic incremental, single-turn absolute, or multi-turn absolute, to meet a wide range of applications. Communication options include CANopen, Modbus RTU, EtherCAT, Modbus TCP/IP, and Profinet, so the motors can be easily connected to any industrial network.

Delta Line’s stepper motors with integrated electronics simplify the physical integration, parameterization, and startup of the system, since the drive and controller are matched to the motor, and the controller automatically recognizes the motor parameters and feedback configuration. With a smart stepper motor, designers and machine builders can achieve cost savings of 20 to 40 percent over a conventional stepper motor with separate drive and controller.

Stepper motors with onboard drive and controller are ideal for applications where the accurate, step-by-step positioning and ease-of-use of a stepper motor is required but space is limited or efficiency is critical. And the motors are IP65 rated, so they can be used in a wide range of environments where moisture or water spray is present.

Advantages at a glance:
• Greater design flexibility and significant space savings with onboard drive and control electronics
• Improved efficiency and reliability with reduced cabling – no need to run motor power and feedback cables to an external controller
• 20 to 40% cost savings thanks to simpler integration and startup and fewer components