Name: Precision Lens Grinder

The customer wanted to improve the efficiency of fabricating optical lenses.

Overview: When fabricating optical lenses, the cycle of cutting and measuring the lens is repeated until the lens curvature dimension meets specifications. The faster this cycle can be repeated, the lower the cost to grind the lens.

Application benefit: By rapidly accelerating and decelerating the grinder cycle time, the overall cost of the finished lens is reduced.

The customer's product: The customer's product is an optical lens grinder that removes material from the lens blank in consecutive cycles until the lens meets specifications.

The customer's present solution: The customer's grinder has a motion control BLDC Drive that was nearing obsolescence and required a replacement control. The customer's request was to equal or improve the cycle time. KB installed the customer's motor in the KB engineering lab for test trials to determine high performance acceleration algorithms based on the motor parameters.

KB's capabilities for solving the problem: It's the KBBL Brushless DC motor control series. This series incorporates the powerful, second-generation, micro-controller that is programmable for custom OEM applications using software with proprietary motor monitoring capabilities. KB's engineering staff has a reputation of working with directly with customer applications to reach satisfactory solutions.

The KB solution: The objective was to accelerate the customer's motor from 0 to 20k rpm in 1 second, run at constant speed during grinding, and drop to low speed during measurements. The proprietary software was designed to rapidly accelerate to 20k rpm, hold speed during the grind, and decrease the speed for measurement when commanded.

The results: Using the KBBL-29 and BLDC software with custom algorithms, the cycle time was improved by decreasing the acceleration time by 50%.

Customer's strategic advantage: The customer got what he wanted - no more, no less - with the following benefits: major performance enhancement, lower production costs, dramatically reduced cycle time, and a significant advantage over his competitors.

A Win-Win solution for both the customer and KB.