Leadshine Steppers (Motor + Encoder + Drive)

Leadshine, specializing in development, manufacturing and sales of high-quality motion control products, released its iSS series integrated steppers at the beginning of March, 2012. An iSS integrated stepper has a stepper motor integrated with a 1,000-line (4,000 PPR) encoder and a hybrid servo drive (closed-loop models have encoders, and open-loop models will be released soon.). At very compact size and with all components integrated, the iSS series steppers can save mounting space, eliminate encoder connection and motor wiring time, reduce interference, and lower cable and labor cost.

By adopting Leadshine’s latest hybrid servo (closed-loop stepper) control technology, the iSS integrated steppers offer high starting torque, high precision and smooth movement, and super-low noise at low speed movement with no obvious resonance area. Different from a conventional constant-current drive in open-loop stepper controls, output current of the iSS is dynamic and changes depending on load condition, the same as servo controls. Therefore, it can significantly reduce motor heating and increase motor lifetime. The drive takes step & direction commands, and is capable of outputting in-position and fault signals back to the master controller or external devices for complete system controls.

The integrated 1,000-line encoder offers the real-time motor shaft position to the drive. Based on that position, the drive can close the loop between the motor and drive, eliminating the possibility of stall or loss of movement synchronization which is often found in open-loop stepper systems. By getting rid of torque reservation in open-loop stepper systems, the iSS integrated steppers can significantly improve high speed performance by as much as 30%. In addition, they perform much better in response time and acceleration over open-loop stepper systems.

Compared with brushless servo systems, the iSS integrated steppers offer much higher low-speed-torque, no overshooting and zero settling time, no hunting, and no/little tuning. Significant cost cutting of the package (motor + encoder + drive) also makes iSS integrated steppers ideal for the motion control systems in many applications.

NEMA17, NEMA23 closed-loop versions are available now, and other products will be released soon.