Industry

Industrial automation and robotics

PLC interfacing, Modbus and CAN fieldbus, and real-time motion control for machines that run unattended.

Scope

What we build in this sector

Product types we have designed, not a list of everything the sector contains.

Servo and traction drives to 11 kW
Machine control and I/O modules
Industrial gateways and protocol bridges
Machine-vision and inspection controllers

Why it is hard

What separates this sector

The constraints that decide the design here, and that a general-purpose electronics supplier tends to meet for the first time on your project.

An oscilloscope showing a bus waveform, probed on a board at the end of a cable run — A long RS-485 or CAN run is a transmission line. Termination and reflection decide whether the far end of a plant sees the same edge the near end sent.

A field visit costs more than the part

An encoder that fails, or a drive that needs per-site tuning, is an engineer on a plane. That economics is why sensorless control and self-commissioning are worth the engineering rather than a luxury.

The environment is the specification

Temperature, vibration, dust and mains disturbance are not edge cases here, they are Tuesday. A design validated only on a bench has not been validated.

Downtime is measured in production, not in hours

A line that stops costs whatever the line makes. Diagnostics that let a plant technician identify a fault without calling the vendor are part of the product, not an accessory to it.

Detail

How we approach it

Industrial equipment is commissioned once and expected to run for years, often in installations nobody will revisit. That shapes the engineering: a design decision that saves a day now and requires a site visit later is not a saving.

What this usually involves

Real-time motion control where determinism has to be guaranteed, not hoped for
Fieldbus integration — Modbus, CAN, RS-485 — into equipment that already exists
Drives that serve several power classes from one firmware image, so commissioning does not require a per-site build
Protection and fault handling verified before a machine is ever attached

Compliance context

What the product is judged against

We design against these and produce the evidence a submission needs. Certification is held by whoever owns the product, not by us — any supplier who tells you otherwise is describing a different arrangement than the one you are buying.

IEC 61508 (functional safety)
IEC 61800 (adjustable-speed drives)
IEC 61131-3 (control programming)
IEC 61000 (EMC immunity and emissions)

Published work

1 published

TMS320F28FOC / DTC11 kW

11 kW sensorless AC servo drive

Sensorless field-oriented control at 380 V and 75 A, validated on elevator traction loads from 3.3 to 7.5 kW.

Read the case study →

Capabilities

Services most often used here

The same six capabilities, in the combination this sector usually needs.

Building something in this space?

Tell us what the product has to do and where it has to survive. We will come back within one business day with an honest read on feasibility, risk and timeline.

Start a project See published work