Actuator

An actuator is a component of a machine that is responsible for moving and

controlling a mechanism or system. In simple terms, it is a "mover".
An actuator requires a control signal and a source of energy. The control signal
is relatively low energy and may be electric voltage or current, pneumatic or
hydraulic pressure, or even human power. Its main energy source may be
an electric current, hydraulic fluid pressure, or pneumatic pressure. When it
receives a control signal, an actuator responds by converting the source's energy
into mechanical motion.

Different Types of Actuators

An actuator is the mechanism by which a control system acts upon an
environment. It has may types. Some major types are as follows:
Hydraulic: A hydraulic actuator consists of cylinder or fluid motor that uses
hydraulic power to facilitate mechanical operation. The mechanical motion gives
an output in terms of linear, rotatory or oscillatory motion. As liquids are nearly
impossible to compress, a hydraulic actuator can exert a large force. The
drawback of this approach is its limited acceleration.
The hydraulic cylinder consists of a hollow cylindrical tube along which a piston
can slide. The term single acting is used when the fluid pressure is applied to just
one side of the piston. The piston can move in only one direction; a spring being
frequently used to give the piston a return stroke. The term double acting is used
when pressure is applied on each side of the piston; any difference in pressure
between the two sides of the piston moves the piston to one side or the other.
Pneumatic: Pneumatic actuators enable considerable forces to be produced from
relatively small pressure changes. A pneumatic actuator converts energy formed
by vacuum or compressed air at high pressure into either linear or rotary motion.
Pneumatic energy is desirable for main engine controls because it can quickly
respond in starting and stopping as the power source does not need to be stored
in reserve for operation. Moreover, pneumatic actuators are safer, cheaper, and
often more reliable and powerful than other actuators. These forces are often used
with valves to move diaphragms to affect the flow of air through the valve.
Electric: An electric actuator may provide the actuation force/torque in one of
several ways. Electromechanical actuators may be used to power a motor that
converts electrical energy into mechanical torque. Another approach is
an electrohydraulic actuator, where the electric motor remains the prime mover,
but provides torque to operate a hydraulic accumulator that is then used to
transmit actuation force in much the same way that diesel engine/hydraulics are
typically used in heavy equipment.
Electrical energy is used to actuate equipment such as multi-turn valves, or
electric-powered construction and excavation equipment.
When used to control the flow of fluid through a valve, a brake is typically
installed above the motor to prevent the fluid pressure forcing open the valve. If
no brake is installed, the actuator gets activated to reclose the valve, which is
slowly forced open again. This sets up an oscillation (open, close, open ...) and
the motor and actuator will eventually become damaged.
Twisted and coiled polymer (TCP) or supercoiled polymer (SCP): Twisted
and coiled polymer (TCP) actuator also known as supercoiled polymer (SCP)
actuator is a coiled polymer that can be actuated by electric power. A TCP
actuator looks like a helical spring. TCP actuators are usually made from silver
coated Nylon. TCP actuators can also be made from other electrical conductance
coat such as gold. TCP actuator should be under a load to keep the muscle
extended. The electrical energy transforms to thermal energy due to electrical
resistance, which is also known as Joule heating, Ohmic heating, and resistive
heating. As the temperature of the TCP actuator increases by Joule heating, the
polymer contracts and it causes the actuator contraction.
Thermal or magnetic: Actuators which can be actuated by applying thermal or
magnetic energy to a solid-state material have been used in commercial
applications. Thermal actuators can be triggered by temperature or heating
through the Joule effect and tend to be compact, lightweight, economical and
with high power density. These actuators use shape memory materials such
as shape-memory alloys (SMAs) or magnetic shape-memory alloys (MSMAs).
Mechanical: Mechanical actuator functions to execute movement by converting
one kind of motion, such as rotary motion, into another kind, such as linear
motion. An example is a rack and pinion. The operation of mechanical actuators
is based on combinations of structural components, such as gears and rails,
or pulleys and chains.

Stepper Motor
A stepper motor, also known as step motor or stepping motor, is a brushless
DC electric motor that divides a full rotation into a number of equal steps. The
motor's position can then be commanded to move and hold at one of these steps
without any position sensor for feedback (an open-loop controller), as long as the
motor is carefully sized to the application in respect to torque and speed.
Stepper motor working principle: How does a stepper motor work? The stepper
motor rotor is a permanent magnet, when the current flows through the stator
winding, the stator winding to produce a vector magnetic field. The magnetic
field drives the rotor to rotate by an angle so that the pair of magnetic fields of
the rotor and the magnetic field direction of the stator are consistent. When the
stator's vector magnetic field is rotated by an angle, the rotor also rotates with the
magnetic field at an angle. Each time an electrical pulse is input, the motor rotates
one degree further. The angular displacement it outputs is proportional to the
number of pulses input and the speed is proportional to the pulse frequency.
Change the order of winding power, the motor will reverse. Therefore, it can
control the rotation of the stepping motor by controlling the number of pulses, the
frequency and the electrical sequence of each phase winding of the motor.

Fundamentals of operation: Brushed DC motors rotate continuously when DC

voltage is applied to their terminals. The stepper motor is known by its property
of converting a train of input pulses (typically square wave pulses) into a precisely
defined increment in the shaft position. Each pulse moves the shaft through a
fixed angle.
Stepper motors effectively have multiple "toothed" electromagnets arranged
around a central gear-shaped piece of iron. The electromagnets are energized by
an external driver circuit or a micro controller. To make the motor shaft turn, first,
one electromagnet is given power, which magnetically attracts the gear's teeth.
When the gear's teeth are aligned to the first electromagnet, they are slightly offset
from the next electromagnet. This means that when the next electromagnet is
turned on and the first is turned off, the gear rotates slightly to align with the next
one. From there the process is repeated. Each of those rotations is called a "step",
with an integer number of steps making a full rotation. In that way, the motor can
be turned by a precise angle.

The circular arrangement of electromagnets is divided into groups, each group

called a phase, and there is an equal number of electromagnets per group. The
number of groups is chosen by the designer of the stepper motor. The
electromagnets of each group are interleaved with the electromagnets of other
groups to form a uniform pattern of arrangement. For example, if the stepper
motor has two groups identified as A or B, and ten electromagnets in total, then
the grouping pattern would be ABABABABAB.
Electromagnets within the same group are all energized together. Because of this,
stepper motors with more phases typically have more wires (or leads) to control
the motor.
Types of Stepper Motors:
There are three main types of stepper motors:

1. Permanent magnet stepper

2. Variable reluctance stepper
3. Hybrid synchronous stepper
Permanent magnet motors use a permanent magnet (PM) in the rotor and operate
on the attraction or repulsion between the rotor PM and the stator electromagnets.
Pulses move the rotor in discrete steps, CW or CCW. If left powered at a final
step a strong detent remains at that shaft location. This detent has a predictable
spring rate and specified torque limit; slippage occurs if the limit is exceeded. If
current is removed a lesser detent still remains, therefore holding shaft position
against spring or other torque influences. Stepping can then be resumed while
reliably being synchronized with control electronics.
Variable reluctance (VR) motors have a plain iron rotor and operate based on the
principle that minimum reluctance occurs with minimum gap, hence the rotor
points are attracted toward the stator magnet poles. Whereas hybrid synchronous
are a combination of the permanent magnet and variable reluctance types, to
maximize power in a small size.
VR motors do not have power off detents.
Two-phase stepper motors: There are two basic winding arrangements for
the electromagnetic coils in a two phase stepper motor: bipolar and unipolar.
Unipolar motors

A unipolar stepper motor has one winding with center tap per phase. Each section
of windings is switched on for each direction of magnetic field. Since in this
arrangement a magnetic pole can be reversed without switching the direction of
current, the commutation circuit can be made very simple (e.g., a single
transistor) for each winding. Typically, given a phase, the center tap of each
winding is made common: giving three leads per phase and six leads for a typical
two phase motor. Often, these two phase commons are internally joined, so the
motor has only five leads.
A microcontroller or stepper motor controller can be used to activate the
drive transistors in the right order, and this ease of operation makes unipolar
motors popular with hobbyists; they are probably the cheapest way to get precise
angular movements. For the experimenter, the windings can be identified by
touching the terminal wires together in PM motors. If the terminals of a coil are
connected, the shaft becomes harder to turn. One way to distinguish the center
tap (common wire) from a coil-end wire is by measuring the resistance.
Resistance between common wire and coil-end wire is always half of the
resistance between coil-end wires. This is because there is twice the length of coil
between the ends and only half from center (common wire) to the end. A quick
way to determine if the stepper motor is working is to short circuit every two pairs
and try turning the shaft. Whenever a higher than normal resistance is felt, it
indicates that the circuit to the particular winding is closed and that the phase is
working.
Bipolar motors: Bipolar motors have a single winding per phase. The current in
a winding needs to be reversed in order to reverse a magnetic pole, so the driving
circuit must be more complicated, typically with an H-bridge arrangement
(however there are several off-the-shelf driver chips available to make this a
simple affair). There are two leads per phase, none are common.

A typical driving pattern for a two coil bipolar stepper motor would be: A+ B+
A− B−. I.e. drive coil A with positive current, then remove current from coil A;
then drive coil B with positive current, then remove current from coil B; then
drive coil A with negative current (flipping polarity by switching the wires e.g.
with an H bridge), then remove current from coil A; then drive coil B with
negative current (again flipping polarity same as coil A); the cycle is complete
and begins anew.
Because windings are better utilized, they are more powerful than a unipolar
motor of the same weight. This is due to the physical space occupied by the
windings. A unipolar motor has twice the amount of wire in the same space, but
only half used at any point in time, hence is 50% efficient (or approximately 70%
of the torque output available). Though a bipolar stepper motor is more
complicated to drive, the abundance of driver chips means this is much less
difficult to achieve.
Servomotor
A servomotor is a rotary actuator or linear actuator that allows for precise
control of angular or linear position, velocity and acceleration. It consists of a
suitable motor coupled to a sensor for position feedback. It also requires a
relatively sophisticated controller, often a dedicated module designed specifically
for use with servomotors.

Servomotors are not a specific class of motor, although the term servomotor is
often used to refer to a motor suitable for use in a closed-loop control system.

Servomotors are used in applications such as robotics, CNC

machinery or automated manufacturing.

A servomotor is a closed-loop servomechanism that uses position feedback to

control its motion and final position. The input to its control is a signal (either
analogue or digital) representing the position commanded for the output shaft.

Working principle of Servo Motors: A servo consists of a Motor (DC or AC), a

potentiometer, gear assembly and a controlling circuit. First of all we use gear
assembly to reduce RPM and to increase torque of motor. Say at initial position
of servo motor shaft, the position of the potentiometer knob is such that there is
no electrical signal generated at the output port of the potentiometer. Now an
electrical signal is given to another input terminal of the error detector amplifier.
Now difference between these two signals, one comes from potentiometer and
another comes from other source, will be processed in feedback mechanism and
output will be provided in term of error signal. This error signal acts as the input
for motor and motor starts rotating. Now motor shaft is connected with
potentiometer and as motor rotates so the potentiometer and it will generate a
signal. So as the potentiometer’s angular position changes, its output feedback
signal changes. After sometime the position of potentiometer reaches at a position
that the output of potentiometer is same as external signal provided. At this
condition, there will be no output signal from the amplifier to the motor input as
there is no difference between external applied signal and the signal generated at
potentiometer, and in this situation motor stops rotating.

The motor is paired with some type of position encoder to provide position and
speed feedback. In the simplest case, only the position is measured. The measured
position of the output is compared to the command position, the external input to
the controller. If the output position differs from that required, an error signal is
generated which then causes the motor to rotate in either direction, as needed to
bring the output shaft to the appropriate position. As the positions approach, the
error signal reduces to zero and the motor stops.
The very simplest servomotors use position-only sensing via
a potentiometer and bang-bang control of their motor; the motor always rotates
at full speed (or is stopped). This type of servomotor is not widely used in
industrial motion control, but it forms the basis of the simple and
cheap servos used for radio-controlled models.
More sophisticated servomotors use optical rotary encoders to measure the speed
of the output shaft and a variable-speed drive to control the motor speed. Both of
these enhancements, usually in combination with a PID control algorithm, allow
the servomotor to be brought to its commanded position more quickly and more
precisely, with less overshooting.
Servomotors vs. stepper motors: Servomotors are generally used as a high-
performance alternative to the stepper motor. Stepper motors have some inherent
ability to control position, as they have built-in output steps. This often allows
them to be used as an open-loop position control, without any feedback encoder,
as their drive signal specifies the number of steps of movement to rotate, but for
this the controller needs to 'know' the position of the stepper motor on power up.
Therefore, on first power up, the controller will have to activate the stepper motor
and turn it to a known position, e.g. until it activates an end limit switch. This can
be observed when switching on an inkjet printer; the controller will move the ink
jet carrier to the extreme left and right to establish the end positions. A servomotor
will immediately turn to whatever angle the controller instructs it to, regardless
of the initial position at power up.
The lack of feedback of a stepper motor limits its performance, as the stepper
motor can only drive a load that is well within its capacity, otherwise missed steps
under load may lead to positioning errors and the system may have to be restarted
or recalibrated. The encoder and controller of a servomotor are an additional cost,
but they optimise the performance of the overall system (for all of speed, power
and accuracy) relative to the capacity of the basic motor. With larger systems,
where a powerful motor represents an increasing proportion of the system cost,
servomotors have the advantage.
There has been increasing popularity in closed loop stepper motors in recent
years. They act like servomotors but have some differences in their software
control to get smooth motion. The main benefit of a closed loop stepper motor is
its relatively low cost. There is also no need to tune the PID controller on a closed
loop stepper system.