Advanced Motion Controls (AMC)

The electronics that turn a command into current

Advanced Motion Controls (AMC), based in Camarillo, California, has been in business since 1987 and does one thing: servo amplifiers, the circuits that take a signal from a motion controller and turn it into current for a motor. The company says its drives run in more than 14,000 production applications, from machine tools and 3D printing to warehouses and robotics. AMC does not build robots — in the drive train described in “Actuators in Humanoid Robots” it supplies the power-electronics layer.

Three tiers of products

The simplest tier is the analog amplifiers of the AxCent line. One example is the 100A40: 100 A peak, 50 A continuous, 80–400 V DC supply. Its datasheet describes it as a drive for brushed DC motors, commanded by a ±10 V signal, protected against over-voltage, under-voltage, over-current, over-temperature and short circuits. Loop gain and current limit are set with potentiometers, no software involved.

The second tier is miniature modules that mount directly on a printed circuit board. The AZBE10A4 delivers 10 A peak and 5 A continuous from a 10–36 V DC supply, handles brushless and brushed motors, and in velocity mode uses an incremental encoder and Hall sensors. That range is typical for small battery-powered mobile robots and manipulators.

The third tier is digital drives from the DigiFlex Performance and FlexPro families. The DPCANTE-060B080 offers 60 A peak (42.4 A RMS) and 30 A continuous at 20–80 V DC, runs in torque, velocity or position mode, uses space vector modulation (SVM) and communicates over CANopen. The manufacturer also offers EtherCAT and Ethernet/IP variants.

Where this fits in a robot

A servo amplifier is part of every axis that lacks a drive with integrated electronics. In an industrial arm or a cobots model the controller usually sits in a cabinet or inside the joint itself. On mobile robots platforms and lab builds it is often chosen separately, paired with a motor and gearbox, for example from Harmonic Drive or Kollmorgen. Elmo Motion Control plays a similar role in a different power range, as do the small actuator controllers from ODrive Robotics and mjbots.

For a robot's cost, size is what matters most: a 100 A, 400 V drive is hardware for a heavy arm or an industrial machine, while a 10 A, 36 V module suits a light battery-powered robot. See how to read these figures in “How to Read a Robot Datasheet”. In humanoids the drive electronics are usually built into the actuator, so a separate AMC amplifier turns up in prototypes and special-purpose machines rather than in series-built robots.

Poland and Europe

In the material we checked we found no Polish distributor for AMC, and we do not want to guess one. For an integrator in Poland that usually means buying through European industrial-electronics distributors or directly from the manufacturer; before ordering it is worth checking lead times and the availability of technical support in the EU. In projects covered by “Poland's Robotization Tax Relief” the drive component goes into the cost of the whole installation rather than being a separate line item.

One point matters for a market overview: AMC is a component supplier for factories settings and prototype shops, not a maker of finished robots. If you are looking for a machine, start with Universal Robots or FANUC; if you are building a custom axis, the servo amplifier will be one of the first decisions.