Spot landing

Making the best even better — that was the chal­lenge for the new line of Siemens motors. Since 1996, the 1PH7 series has rendered successful service as the primary drive for belt-driven and coupled tooling machines — around 270,000 of these units are cooled by fans from Mulfingen. At the end of 2009, the Siemens industry divi­sion presented the successor, the new 1PH8 line. These advanced motors offer bene­fits that will inspire the user: excel­lent refine­ment and vibra­tions are the basis for greater preci­sion, allowing better quality work­pieces to be produced. The motor line is now more dynamic and has a broad perfor­mance spec­trum, a high speed range and it employs a modular prin­ciple that makes it ideal as the stan­dard drive for conven­tional tooling machine spin­dles. The motors can also be used in produc­tion machines such as textile machines, hoists, crane instal­la­tions and test stands.

One of the modular elements for the 1PH8 is the forced venti­lation unit supplied by ebm-papst up to shaft height 160. Expe­ri­ence with the prede­cessor version showed that preci­sion was impor­tant when config­uring the oper­ating points for the new line of motors and that the design had to be adapted to accom­mo­date the new motor gener­a­tion. The result is a completely new forced venti­lation unit. The air perfor­mance char­ac­ter­istic is precisely config­ured for the new motors and the units also work more quietly. Motor layout, impeller design and blade setting have been opti­mised and the die-cast aluminium hous­ings have been config­ured to suit the new motor design. Here, ebm-papst engi­neers coop­er­ated closely with the indus­trial designers at Siemens.

The forced venti­lation units had to satisfy the design spec­i­fi­ca­tions of the lead design agency at Siemens. Together with the motor and more compact terminal box they were to be treated as one unit from a single casting. The elec­tronic exchange of 3D design models made this harmon­i­sa­tion possible and led, for example, to curved struts on the guard grille, which visu­alises the dynamics of the drive.

Tech­ni­cally, the forced venti­lation unit inspires not only with its optimal air perfor­mance char­ac­ter­is­tics and minimal noise emis­sions, but also with indi­vidual options. Apart from the stan­dard flow direc­tion “blowing over the motor”, a version “extrac­tion over the motor” is also avail­able. Plant engi­neers use this version as a vari­able drive for lathes in ultra-precise machining centres because extrac­tion means that toler­ance devi­a­tions caused by the thermal influ­ence of the air flow are ruled out. In addi­tion, vibra­tion-free versions, filter and pipe connec­tions for extremely dusty working envi­ron­ments are in the process of imple­men­ta­tion. And the unit is certainly durable: the housing made of stable die-cast aluminium and fan vanes made of sheet metal ensure a mean service life of at least 40,000 oper­ating hours.