Special Machines & Equipment

Motors and controls are used in many research applications. Our motion control systems serve the special properties and performance characteristics needed in demanding scientific experiments:

• Bespoke motor designs and geometries
• Highly accuracte direct drives (picometer and microrad)
• Direktdrives, torque motors with large diameter, >1m and torque, >100.000Nm
• 3D-torque motors (spherical)
• Extremely fast motors
• Precise time and phase synchronisation between many axes
• Vacuum compatibility
• Radiation resistance
• etc.

Interesting applications:

• Astonomy, in the optical and infra-red spectrum
• Radio-astronomy
• Semiconductor physics - chopper systems
• Medical research - Nystagmography and Human training centrifuges
• Manipulators for radio-acrive environments
• Collimators for the LHC at CERN

Current research projects

MACCON is an important partner of industry and of many Universities and research institutes, when special applications for Motion Control are demanded or Motion Control technologies themselves are to be improved.

We supply both fast and precise motor and positioning systems for research applications, including systems with many axes etc.

We are also involved in many research projects at national and European leave.

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).