Motion and Controls

Motion and Controls cater to a very wide variety of equipments that are involved in the guiding, sensing, measuring, and controlling single or multi-axis linear and rotary motion. They are used in a manner so as to generate or control motion. This equipments work in the sub field of automation and are widely used in the packaging, printing, textile, semiconductor production, and assembly industries. These devices include various electrical components to change the speed of shafts in equipment drives. Motion control is an important part of robotics and CNC machine tools, however it is more complex when used for specialized machines.

Types of Motion and Controls
Motion control devices have many areas within themselves that cater to specific industry. One of them is the clutches and brakes that are used in order to reduce friction and carry loads for linear or rotary motion. The control drives and drive components includes common automotive equipments like gears, sprockets, belts and pulleys, which transmits and control power motion. Encoders are those motion controls that provides the information related to position and velocity to the closed loop control systems. Linear actuators, linear position sensing and linear rotary motion components aim at providing linear motion via motors to ball screws, lead screws, slides, stages, and actuators. Machine motion controllers combine multiple elements of motion control into unified single-axis or multi-axis packages. Motor control drives install devices for the analog and digital control of motor motion for varied motions. The operator interface motion control is used to display screens, pushbuttons, keyboards, lights, and other control devices to help interact with computers, sensors and other equipments. Orientation positioning sensing highlights computers, sensors and other equipments while the slip rings are those ring form of motion control that provide a continuous electrical connection through brushes on stationary contacts.

Industry Trends & Scope
The global trend of employment of general motion control devices has been recorded to have grown tremendously to reach a mind blowing $480 million between 2006 and 2007, thus totaling up to an unbelievable value of $6208 million in total. This data has been supported by IMS Research (Wellingborough, UK). The Chinese and Indian motion control industry has also tasted the sweet of success with an exceptional 24.9% annual growth rate. This increase is being predicted to have been possible due to string growth of machine tool and textile machinery market in 2006. The China motion controls market has reached $410.2 million in 2006. This has motivated the manufacturers and suppliers of motion control equipments to further expand their in depth understanding of the requisite field in order to enjoy great profits.

Some of the major areas where the application of motion control is at its maximum are packaging, printing, textile, semiconductor production, and assembly industries along with automation. Be it the task of changing brakes in automobiles, controlling motion and motors in various mechanical industry or positioning stages, slides and guide to transmit torque or motion into thrust, the scope of motion controls is wide and crucial.