The second is research on motion control. For example, when controlling items such as machine tools, since there is non-linear friction and other phenomena from non-linear elements, those elements drag down the accuracy of the control. To achieve high quality manufacturing process technology, we have to conquer the main causes of those problems, and make sure we can achieve the most important thing which is free, fast, and accurate control.
The third is research on AC motor drives. AC motor drives are currently used in various fields, and the requirements for motors are diversifying. Since there are totally different requirements for each of the different uses, it's important to design the best possible motor for the particular application. For that reason, we are developing CAD systems for Applications Specific Electric Motor drive (ASEM).
And among the various AC motors, we're focusing our attention on synchronized motors which are more efficient. However, since a rotor position sensor is generally necessary, we are developing sensor-less technology to fill the requirements of certain applications.
The motivation for bringing in the WT1600 Digital Power Meter for our motor drive research was to use a power meter that was able to analyze motor characteristics and thereby precisely measure whether values that were evaluated beforehand were actually correct.
In recent years, semiconductor power conversion technology (PWM technology) has been widely used for supplying power to motors. The WT1600's high, 1 MHz frequency bandwidth means we can expect highly accurate power measurement for PWM. Also, while viewing the waveform display, trend display, or vector display, we can measure various power parameters simultaneously which is a definite plus. It comes with a 50 A input element so large currents are also supported.
In R&D on ASEM CAD system, we also use the WT1600. We measure the voltage, current, and power on the inverter input and the motor input. Before bringing in the WT1600 we needed an additional digital oscilloscope, but now we can take measurements with just this 1 unit. That's one of it's biggest merits we think. We can view not only numeric data, but also simultaneously view waveforms of the input signals, so we don't have to use a waveform observation instrument such as an oscilloscope; that makes it tremendously efficient. The built-in printer and the ability to save to floppy disk make it easy to generate reports, so we plan to use it even more from here on out. The WT1600 we purchased has the motor evaluation option installed so in the future we will use it to measure the voltage output from torque-meter, and we plan to implement it for efficiency evaluation as well.
