Panasonic Industry announced that it has commercialized the MINAS A7 Family servo system, which has achieved the industry’s highest degree of motion performance and is equipped with AI that automatically performs precise tuning superior to that done by human experts for the first time in the industry. The product will be launched in January 2024 in Japan, followed by a global rollout.
Technology for automating servo motor tuning has been evolving. However, conventional automatic tuning was unable to achieve satisfactory results for equipment that requires ultraprecise positioning performance, such as semiconductor manufacturing equipment and electronic component mounting machines. These things required sophisticated manual tuning skills achieved by engineers recognized as experts.
This product automates such precise tuning work, previously only attainable by human experts, by fully leveraging AI technology. It has become possible to reduce the positioning settling time, which is an indicator of positioning performance, by 45% (compared to previous human results), and operation time required for tuning by 90% or more. In addition, the speed response frequency, which is the basic performance of servo system, is the industry’s highest1 at 4.0 kHz or more (1.25 times5 that of Panasonic’s conventional product), and the encoder resolution is the industry’s highest at 27 bits (134,217,728 pulses/rotation). These results will contribute to the improvement of equipment performance.
Panasonic Industry will contribute to the improvement of the performance of customer equipment and, at the same time, the realization of energy saving through reduced waste due to the inferior quality of products manufactured by such equipment, and improved equipment cycle time.
Industry’s first commercialized AI-equipped servo system. Achieves precise automatic tuning superior to that done by human experts, thereby reducing operation time by 90%
Panasonic’s independently developed precAIse TUNING, which makes full use of AI technology, achieves precise automatic tuning. It even automates tasks in areas where experts used to spend time tuning manually due to unsatisfactory performance from conventional automatic tuning functions.
Equipment that requires ultraprecise positioning accuracy, such as semiconductor manufacturing equipment and electronic component mounting machines, requires tuning that precisely regulates the vast number of parameters for each individual piece of equipment’s characteristics. This necessitated the sophisticated knowledge, senses, and skills of expert engineers.
In addition, there are some cases where even such experts require several days to a week to achieve the required performance. Equipped with precAIse TUNING, this product automates precise tuning that was previously performed manually by experts to enable users to achieve positioning superior performance through simple initial settings.
The settling time for positioning, which is an indicator of positioning performance, is reduced by 45% compared to experts’ results, and operation time required for tuning are reduced by 90% or more.
Achieves the industry’s highest level of motion performance
It achieves the encoder resolution of the servo motor with 27 bits (134,217,728 pulses/time), an industry high. The speed response frequency, which indicates the control performance of servo amplifiers, reaches an industry high of 4.0 kHz or greater (1.25 times that of Panasonic’s conventional product).
These results will contribute to the improvement of the positioning and processing accuracy of customers’ equipment. Furthermore, the servo motor has achieved a maximum rotation speed of 7,150 r/min. The improvement of the operating speed for equipment will contribute to shorter cycle times.
The application-specialized servo amplifier effortlessly achieves high-precision control
Normally, the control of servo motors requires complex control programs in controllers, such as PLCs. The sensor direct feedback (displacement control) type servo amplifier adopted for this product improves the system’s responsiveness from the input of the sensor to the output to the servo motor, wherein the amplifier itself directly captures sensor data without going through controllers.
Eliminating the need for creating complex control programs for controllers enables high-speed and high-precision control. This will contribute to the reduction of man-hours for customer program development.
In the future, Panasonic Industry plans to sequentially expand the lineup of application-specialized servo amplifiers, such as high-precision gantry control type and sensor direct feedback (pressure control) type products.
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