Servo Motors

Listing ID #3869065

A servo motor is a DC, AC, or Brushless DC motor combined with a position sensing device( a digital decoder).

A three-wire DC servo motor incorporates a DC motor, a gear train; limit stops beyond which the shaft cannot turn a potentiometer for position feedback, and an integrated circuit for position control. Of the three wires protruding from the motor casing, one is for power, one is for ground, and one is a control input where a pulse-width signals to what position the motor should servo. As long as the coded signal exists on the input line, the servo will maintain the angular position of the shaft. As the coded signal changes, the angular position of the shaft changes.

Servos are extremely useful in Robotics. The motors are small and are extremely powerful for their size.

The servo motor has some control circuits and a potentiometer (a variable resistor) that is connected to the output shaft. The potentiometer allows the control circuitry to monitor the current angle of the servo motor. If the shaft is at the correct angle, then the motor shuts off. If the circuit finds that the angle is not correct, it will turn the motor the correct direction until the angle is correct. The output shaft of the servo is capable of travelling somewhere around 180 degrees.

The control wire is used to communicate the angle. The angle is determined by the duration of a pulse that is applied to the control wire. This is called Pulse Coded Modulation. The servo expects to see a pulse every 20 milliseconds (.02 seconds). The length of the pulse will determine how far the motor turns. A 1.5 millisecond pulse, for example, will make the motor turn to the 90 degree position (often called the neutral position). If the pulse is shorter than 1.5 ms, then the motor will turn the shaft to closer to 0 degrees. If the pulse is longer than 1.5ms, the shaft turns closer to 180 degrees.

Servo Motors are DC Motors with a servo mechanism to provide a precise angular motion. Pulse width modulation (PWM) technique is used to set the angle of rotation. Generally RC servo motors have a rotation limit of 900 to 1800 but servos with high rotation angles are also available.

Servo motor is a special type of motor which is automatically operated up to certain limit for a given command with help of error-sensing feedback to correct the performance. There are some special types of application of electrical motor where rotation of the motor is required for just a certain angle not continuously for long period of time.

A servo motor is basically a DC motor(in some special cases it is AC motor) along with some other special purpose components that make a DC motor a servo. In a servo unit, you will find a small DC motor, a potentiometer, gear arrangement and an intelligent circuitry. The intelligent circuitry along with the potentiometer makes the servo to rotate according to our wishes.

This is nothing but a simple electrical motor, controlled with the help of servomechanism. If the motor as controlled device, associated with servomechanism is DC motor, then it is commonly known DC Servo Motor. If the controlled motor is operated by AC, it is called AC Servo Motor. For these applications some special types of motor are required with some special arrangement which makes the motor to rotate a certain angle for a given electrical input (signal). For this purpose servo motor comes into picture. This is normally a simple DC motor which is controlled for specific angular rotation with help of additional servomechanism (a typical closed loop feedback control system). The main reason behind using a servo is that it provides angular precision, i.e. it will only rotate as much we want and then stop and wait for next signal to take further action.

A servo system mainly consists of three basic components

• Controlled Device

• Output Sensor

• Feedback System

This is an automatic closed loop control system. Here instead of controlling a device by applying variable input signal, the device is controlled by a feedback signal generated by comparing output signal and reference input signal. When reference input signal or command signal is applied to the system, it is compared with output reference signal of the system produced by output sensor, and a third signal produced by feedback system. This third signal acts as input signal of controlled device. This input signal to the device presents as long as there is a logical difference between reference input signal and output signal of the system