Seven million servo motors

FANUC LTD and GE Fanuc Automation have announced the cumulative production of more than seven million AC servo motors, and the two companies anticipate that eight million total motors will soon be produced. FANUC AC servo motors are used in robotics and CNC machine tool applications, offeringreliability, speed and accuracy.

Since AC servo motor production began in 1982, FANUC manufactured one million units in 1991, two million in 1995, three million in 1998, four million in 2001 and five million in 2003. An additional two million units have been produced in the last three years.

FANUC was the first in the industry to offer AC servo motors and has continually expanded its offerings and production capabilities since that time. In 1994, the high performance, energy saving α series AC servo motor was developed and more than 2.7 million α servo motors were produced. 2001 marked the beginning of the αi series AC servo motors. These feature reduced size, high rotational speeds and high-resolution pulse coders.

Over the years production has increased several times to meet market demand. Original production capabilities of 15,000 units per month were increased to 25,000, and then high demand for the α and αi series drove production to be increased again to almost 60,000 motors per month. Last year, production began at a new stateof- the-art robotized motor factory, which now allows FANUC LTD to produce a total combined output of 150,000 servo motors per month between its motor facilities.