by Anders Frederiksen & Margaret Naughton
Welcome to the first installment in our blog series exploring the dynamic world of industrial mobile robots. As industries continue to push the boundaries of automation, mobile robots are becomi...
We examined the power inverter, the power electronics block that sits at the heart of every motor drive, in the previous blog in this series . It is the controllable power element that enables modulation of the power to the motor in or...
The inverter stage is the “muscle” of the drive – a power electronics block that provides the regulated, conditioned power directly to the motor, driving it in the manner required by the end application, providing the amperes needed...
We addressed the requirements and circuits needed within a variable speed drive (VSD) to provide the main control power supply and the power supplies for the inverter electronics – namely gate drivers and current sense circuits in the prev...
The last blog addressed the AC input stage of the motor drive. This is primarily an AC-DC power conversion stage where the AC input power is converted to a DC level that provides the input to the main three-phase inverter. Several other power do...
The previous blog in the series gave a snapshot overview of the different elements that make up a variable speed drive (VSD). The block diagram is expanded in more detail in Fig. 1 below, where the different parts of the drive as well as th...
This blog is focused on the basic working of the variable speed drive - a critical component in enabling precise and accurate motor control in applications such as conveyors, winding, printing, extrusion machinery, and many other industrial applicati...
This blog looks at how motor control architectures and functions are evolving to meet the requirements of Industry 4.0 – from simple grid-connected motors to complex multi-axis servo drive solutions. This evolution has been accelerated by the i...
This blog series will look at motor drives from many different angles - from architectures to power management, from connectivity to cybersecurity, and much more in between. We are starting from the top down and this first blog looks at how making mo...
There's been a flurry of news about smartphone manufacturers slowing down older models in order to prevent phones with older batteries from shutting down unexpectedly. Even though the intent was good, there still has been customer backlash. Customers...
You rely on secure microcontrollers to protect your designs from reverse engineering, tampering, and side-channel attacks. So you may be wondering: Are they safe from Meltdown and Spectre? Maxim's DeepCover secure microcontrollers are unaffected by t...
If you're ready for a mental break with some good mental stimulation, check out the EE-Sim Power Designer Challenge. This crossword puzzle tests your knowledge of things like transistor types, AC loop analysis results, resistor colors, and more. Comp...
If you're designing small, battery-powered devices, you're probably trying different techniques to extend the battery life of your product. Have you considered the quiescent current, the circuit's quiet state? While typically nominal, quiescent curre...
Behind an accurate battery state-of-charge for your device is, of course, a good fuel gauge. Traditionally, designing accurate fuel gauges has required costly, time-consuming battery characterization. Now, fuel gauge ICs are available that do not req...
Need to design smaller, simpler, and cooler power supplies? We have just the video series for you. Maxim has teamed up with Bob Mammano, the father of the first switch-mode power supply, on a three-part online Power System Design Seminar. While Mamma...
Jean Anne Booth's mother was not about to wear an emergency alert device. "She thinks they're ugly, they are limited outside the home unless they are tethered to a smartphone (which she doesn't have), and she finds those big help buttons socially sti...
HD Medical has created an electronic stethoscope that augments sound with visual displays of heart waveforms. The audio quality is up to 30x better than that of traditional stethoscopes, too. For Arvind Thiagarajan, the company's founder and CEO, thi...
When there's a need to protect sensitive loads and preserve long-term reliability of equipment, you're likely to see the use of isolated power supplies. Isolation protects against ground loops, which could produce nasty parasitic currents that could ...
Security was a key theme at this year's IoT DevCon in Santa Clara. "In order to achieve the benefits of a connected world, you have to create trust in that connected world," noted Bill Diotte, CEO of Mocana, which protects more than 100 million IoT d...
The Pocket IO™︎ programmable logic controller (PLC) development platform from Maxim Integrated Products, Inc. addresses the challenges of industrial automation and Industry 4.0 designers who need to keep a manufacturing line running 24 hours a day, 7 ...
