Fast, accurate & robust

Special covers, for example, reliably prevent the intrusion of dirt or hot particles into the drive; purge connections are also provided which, in combination with the cover, can generate overpressure inside the housing. Industrial connectors with bayonet locks facilitate the assembly. The linear stages can be easily aligned during installation thanks to a specially-formed edge with a parallelism (//) smaller than 50 μm to the bearing guides or to the direction of motion.

At 116 or 166mm wide, their load capacity is a maximum of 400 and 450N, respectively, and the travel ranges of the series vary between 52 mm and 813 mm. At the same time, the linear stages position with an accuracy of a few micrometers and provide speeds of up to 2 m/s ensuring high throughput. They can be easily combined for multi-axis applications.

Three-phase magnetic direct drives are used for these new linear stages. The ironless motors are particularly suitable for positioning tasks with the highest demands on precision because no undesirable interaction with the permanent magnets occurs (cogging torque). This enables a smooth running even at very low speeds. In addition, there are no vibrations at high speeds. PI has selected advanced motor designs that provide high forces, which expands the use of the smaller stages even with high accelerations and duty cycles.

Position detection directly at the motion platform ensures that positioning is not influenced by backlash or other mechanical nonlinearities. The linear stages may be controlled by industrial automation controls from ACS, an international manufacturer of modern multi-axis motion controllers, who has been a part of the PI Group since 2017. Alternatively, the PI controller C-891 can also be used to operate the linear stages.