For 30 years MACCON has been developing technology for aerospace applications.

We have provided many motors and actuators for aircraft and unmanned flying objects, for applications such as:

  • Positioning
  • Flap control
  • Helicopter blade control
  • Sensor-head stabilisation
  • Antenna control
  • Pumps and ventilation compressors

We are also active in space.

Do you have technical questions or need a quote?

Contact us today to talk to an experienced MACCON engineer!

Requirements for drive electronics in the aerospace industry

Aerospace motor and drive applications have a number of common, critical requrements :

  • High efficiency and torque density
  • High efficiency
  • Demanding environmental conditions: vibration, shock, temperature, vacuum
  • High reliablity and availability, partially ensured by:
    twoi-, three- and Ffour-way redundancy of all elekctrical and control circutis
  • Demanding and comprehnsive analysis and test programs

MACCON is involved in projects that involve research and development for applications in these harsh environments. One of the current projects is: TEMA-UAV.
This study is about the Design and Evaluation of Fault-Tolerant Electro-Mechanical Actuators for Flight Controls of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.

Electro-mechanical actuators (EMAs) are a primary actuation technology for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Intensive research has been conducted for designing and evaluating fault-tolerant EMAs for flight controls of UAVs to ensure their compliance with new airworthiness requirements for safe operation over civilian zones. The state-of-the-art research involves several fault-tolerant architectures for EMAs based on parallel electric motors or a single motor with internal fault-tolerant features. In this study, a fault-tolerant architecture is introduced, comprised of two serial electric motors driven by two isolated controllers and a health monitoring system. The procedures of developing various fault-tolerant features are discussed with a deep focus on designing health monitoring functions and evaluating their influence on the overall actuator stability and availability. This work has been conducted and evaluated based on operational data for ALAADy: a heavy gyrocopter-type UAV at DLR (German Aerospace Center).

Space

In space our motors can be found on the International Space Station and the Columbus spacecraft as well as on many satellites.

Our motors are used wherever fast and precise motion is required, for example:

  • Scanners
  • Filter wheels
  • Reaction wheels
  • Actuators
  • Shutters
  • Deflection and positioning drives
  • Laser and optical pointing systems
  • Valve control

Here are just some of the space programs, to which we have contributed:

  • Biolab / MGS, Micro-gravity System
  • Mars - PanCAM
  • SOFIA,Stratospheric Observatory for IR Astronomy
  • LCT, Laser Communications Termina
  • Tandem-X
  • TAU
  • GEO
  • MHS Scanner
  • FY-3 (FengYun-3) Polar Orbiting Meteorological Satellite
  • BepiColombo, Antenna De-spin Mechanism (ADM)
  • EnMAP
  • Prisma
  • Sentinel 3
  • International Berthing and Docking Mechanism, LEMA

In addition to motors, we also provide feedback sensors and drive and control electronics. For more information on our space-qualified drive electronics, click here!