Electronics

Drive systems

Muirhead have produced a Motor control board for a 4 way motor control using a split board design. The board (right) is a 4 x 200W motor controller. This board uses ‘through via’ heat sinking to an Aluminium heat sink directly bonded to the main PCB.

The controller is constructed using a single main board approach with a daughter board for low voltage supplies, signal processing and communication. The main power board has a segmented architecture defining the four drive elements for the actuator.

Each actuator controller has independent control, power conditioning and EMC management while a hardware watchdog circuit is employed for isolation of the motor drive in the event of position loop failure.

The components used for the integrated drive are selected to meet the requirements of the high temperature environment and plastic devices are used throughout the design. Muirhead have extensive experience with high temperature design and optimisation in both mechanics and electronics.