Torque motors can be specified with a watertight cooling jacket

Estimated reading time 2 minutes

High quality TMB+ torque motors, manufactured by ETEL in Switzerland and available in the UK and Ireland through HEIDENHAIN (GB) – www.heidenhaingb.com, have the new option of a cooling jacket that provides alternative mounting options and other advantages to users in the machine tool industry. It also opens the door to new applications and markets, for example in aerospace and semiconductor manufacturing.

For more than a decade, HEIDENHAIN group member ETEL has been producing top quality, frameless torque motors with high continuous flux density in the magnetic gap for powering thousands of machine tools around the world. An increasing number of manufacturers are keen to use direct-drive torque motors to control axis motions precisely, as their advantages over conventional drives with gearbox or toothed belt transmissions are well known.

What may not be so obvious is that effective heat dissipation by liquid cooling increases torque motor performance substantially and can even double it. Until now, cooling management was mainly the responsibility of the customer, who had to design a machine structure precisely to accommodate the motor and to ensure water tightness, especially against ingress of coolant flowing close to it.

With the introduction of the cooling jacket option on all low-cogging ETEL TMB+ motors, which in any case are thermally efficient, HEIDENHAIN is providing a solution that removes the burden of both cooling and water tightness of the unit from the machine designer. At the same time, it leaves room for different machine layouts and material selections, which can lead to significant cost reductions. Design flexibility is assisted further by the jacket being available with either radial or axial water inlet/outlet.

ETEL claims to be unique on the market in that more than 60 of its motor sizes equipped with a cooling jacket are available. Optimised for ease of mounting, the robust jacket consists of a precisely mounted metal enclosure that ensures water tightness and superior motor performance to conventional mounting relying on open cooling.

Customers may decide whether or not to have the motor delivered with the cooling jacket already fitted. As the motor inside is a standard TMB+ product, all variants of the products’ windings, cables, sensors and bridge are compatible.