Gear Motor Basics - An Introduction to Gear Motors
Selecting a gear motor can be complicated. Which do you choose first, the reducer or motor? How do you know which motor types can work with which gearbox types? Groschopp's goal with this nine part video series is to equip you with the information and tools you need to match gearboxes and motors. Along the way, we'll discuss the advantages, disadvantages and characteristics of our three gearbox types - Parallel Shaft, Planetary, and Right Angle. Once you've become familiar with each style, we'll explain two different ways to match these reducers to the appropriate motor. For additional resources regarding motor selection, watch our video series, 'How to Choose an Electric Motor.'
Transcript
00:00:05 [Music] hi this is Janet and Joe with growshop and welcome to our video series on gear motor basics we know selecting a gear motor can be problematic which do you choose first the reducer or the motor how do you know which motor types can work with which gearboxes and so on our goal with this video series is to equip you with the information and tools you
00:00:32 need to match gear boxes and motors along the way we'll show you the impact a proper match has on gear motor performance whether you're in the early design stages or making sure the gear motor in your product is the right one for the job by the end of this nine part series you'll be confidently selecting gear motors for this series we'll review gear motor basics and discuss the three
00:00:53 common reducer types their construction characteristics advantages and disadvantages then using this foundation will dive into two different methods of selecting a gear motor and highlight the common mistakes in the gear motor selection process we'll wrap up the series with several examples of real applications to demonstrate the concepts we cover so let's get started with a
00:01:16 quick overview of motors and the rationale behind gear motors if you're in the need of more in-depth motor training check out the link below for our video series how to choose an electric motor the purpose of a motor regardless of the application is to change electrical power to mechanical power no matter the motor type the electrical to mechanical power
00:01:35 conversion is achieved by inputting an electrical current to create attracting magnetic fields that induce rotation of the motor shaft this rotation provides the torque needed to move or hold a load we'll be focusing on three motor types for this series the permanent magnet DC AC induction and brushless DC motors you'll notice that we aren't addressing stepper and servo motors which are
00:01:59 related more specifically to positioning applications and this video series is designed for general motion requirements we've created this chart to quickly compare the motor types we're discussing and provide a starting point when you have an application in mind the chart compares motors of roughly the same physical size and differentiates the motor types by speed horsepower rating
00:02:20 and see life and noise ratings and starting torque you can download the chart using the link below when selecting a motor for an application you'll first determine which criteria are the most important for the application and make your motor selection accordingly we'll cover this in more detail than later videos once the motor is selected you'll
00:02:39 need to consider the motor size versus its relationship to the desired speed and output torque of the application as this influences reducer selection let's look deeper at this concept we've graphed the speed in rpm that would be required for a range of different motor sizes to achieve an output of 200 watts as you can see you would need a roughly 500 cubic inch motor at the speed of a
00:03:01 thousand rpm to achieve 200 watts of output imagine the size motor you would need to run at 100 rpm and achieve 200 watts output it would be the size of a house basically the slower the motor speed the larger the motor needs to be large motors can be expensive and may not fit the envelope specified for an application the alternative solution is to pair a
00:03:23 gear reducer with a smaller motor the sweet spot that's indicated on the curve is the point where motor size versus speed is optimized using a gearbox with the motor enables the smaller motor to operate in that zone keep watching as we begin our discussion of gearbox types in the next three videos first up parallel shaft reducers remember to check out the links below for the resources from this
00:03:47 video and if you want to dive deeper into motors check out our series on how to choose an electric motor for more information about growshop or any of our products check out our website at [Music] you you