Cool Muscle motors check cap torque and tighten as required

Eighteen Reliance Cool Muscle motors were recently used by Labman Automation Limited, a laboratories and industrial robotic systems specialist, in its new automated bottle inspection system design. Bottles travel to one of nine test stations and are photographed and weighed to check bottle condition and filled volume. After passing these prerequisite tests, the bottles are barcode scanned and a Cool Muscle motor lowers a mechanism to check the cap tightness and, if necessary, tighten the cap. When all tests are passed, the bottles travel into the main bottle handling system.

Reliance Cool Muscle motors are ingenious small servo systems, encompassing an integrated vector drive, amplifier, controller, H-infinity tuner, 50,000-count magnetic encoder and a 0-3000rpm high-torque motor. These are integrated into one intelligent motion control system that allows a multitude of functions to be performed by just one motor.

The ability to measure and change the torque, on the fly, permits the checking and setting of bottle cap tightness. The high torque/speed properties, which are said to be superior to those of many of its rivals, made it excellent for driving the ball screw axis that handles the bottles between conveyor belts. This, coupled with the ease of integrating the motor with existing control electronics, and the simplicity of programming the motor, made its selection an easy decision.

Jamie Marsay, the project manager for the system design, is pleased with the performance of the motor, saying: "All in all the motors were the first choice for this application and for many future systems to come."