Electric drives offer high positioning repeatability 

Whether for align­ment, con­vey­ing, or pick-and-place and ver­ti­cal trans­port appli­ca­tions: Elec­tric dri­ves are used through­out the indus­try to move work­pieces. To ensure the required process reli­a­bil­i­ty, very pre­cise posi­tion­ing repeata­bil­i­ty and very low back­lash are nec­es­sary in some cas­es. To enable users to meet these high require­ments even bet­ter, SMC has expand­ed its estab­lished LESH series of elec­tric actu­a­tors to include the LESYH series as elec­tric com­pact slides in a high­ly rigid design. They impress with a posi­tion­ing repeata­bil­i­ty of ±0.01 mm (±10 μm) thanks to recir­cu­lat­ing ball screws, a back­lash of max. 0.1 mm and a ver­ti­cal pay­load of up to 20 kg.

They also fea­ture a bat­tery-free absolute encoder that enables fast (re)startup.   Trans­fer appli­ca­tions using elec­tric dri­ves are part of the stan­dard reper­toire through­out the indus­try. If the require­ments for pre­cise posi­tion­ing are par­tic­u­lar­ly high, users must resort to solu­tions with very accu­rate repeata­bil­i­ty. With the LESH series from SMC, design­ers already had estab­lished dri­ves at their dis­pos­al for this pur­pose — whose per­for­mance fig­ures have now been increased again with the series. Thus, the new elec­tric com­pact slides in a high­ly rigid design have, in addi­tion to a posi­tion­ing repeata­bil­i­ty accu­rate to the microm­e­ter, also a very low back­lash, can move even high­er pay­loads ver­ti­cal­ly and also make ref­er­ence runs unnec­es­sary thanks to a bat­tery-free absolute encoder. The spe­cial­ist for pneu­mat­ic and elec­tric automa­tion thus cov­ers an even wider range of applications.

Precise and powerful

Thanks to the use of a recir­cu­lat­ing ball screw for the dri­ve, which can be oper­at­ed with either a step­per motor or ser­vo motor (24 VDC each), the series achieves a repeat accu­ra­cy of ±0.01 mm dur­ing posi­tion­ing. This means that it meets par­tic­u­lar­ly high require­ments in terms of pre­ci­sion. This is fur­ther sup­port­ed by a max­i­mum back­lash of 0.1 mm. Design­ers thus ben­e­fit from improved process reli­a­bil­i­ty in high-pre­ci­sion appli­ca­tions — and this at a max. accel­er­a­tion of 5000 mm/s2 and a max­i­mum speed of 400 mm/s, which ensures short cycle times. The series is avail­able as a design with or with­out belt. The lat­ter allows the use as a Z‑axis for lift­ing or low­er­ing work­pieces. Com­pared to the pre­vi­ous series, the ver­ti­cal pay­load has once again been sig­nif­i­cant­ly increased: from 0.5 to 6 kg (size 8), from 2 to 12 kg (size 16) and from 4 to 20 kg (size 25). If users opt for the option with motor brake, they can access a hold­ing force of up to 385 N. Over­all, design­ers can thus cov­er a sig­nif­i­cant­ly more exten­sive range of applications.

High flexibility, compatibility and productivity

With the LESYH series, motor mount­ing is pos­si­ble in three direc­tions: axi­al, right or left par­al­lel. In the step­per motor ver­sion, the JXC series con­trollers pro­vide con­trol of the dri­ves via var­i­ous field­bus sys­tems (PROFINET, Ether­CAT, EtherNet/IP) or oth­er con­trol sys­tems such as IO-Link as well as par­al­lel inputs — in the case of AC ser­vo motors, these are the LECN‑T series con­trollers. As an exten­sion of the LESH series estab­lished on the mar­ket, it can also be eas­i­ly inte­grat­ed. In addi­tion, motors (motor pow­er 100/200 W) from 18 man­u­fac­tur­ers can be used for the motor­less ver­sion. Togeth­er, this gives users a high degree of flex­i­bil­i­ty in machine design.    In addi­tion to its impres­sive per­for­mance fig­ures, the LESYH series fea­tures a bat­tery-free absolute encoder that stores the last posi­tion of the dri­ve in the event of a pow­er fail­ure or emer­gency stop, for example.

This means that oper­a­tion can be resumed imme­di­ate­ly with­out a time-con­sum­ing ref­er­ence run, which means more pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. In addi­tion, not only stor­age and main­te­nance require­ments are reduced, but also the eco­log­i­cal foot­print, since no bat­tery is required, which there­fore does not have to be stored or main­tained, nor does it have to be dis­posed of. To reli­ably detect end posi­tions and inter­me­di­ate posi­tions, the series can be option­al­ly equipped with a D‑M9 series elec­tron­ic sig­nal trans­mit­ter from SMC. This has a 2‑color dis­play, where­by the opti­mum oper­at­ing range (green) is imme­di­ate­ly apparent.