Novel drive shaft actuator provides precision control through a lightweight, compact design, offering a wide choice of adjustment gear ratios coupled with long life and high efficiency.

Machinery manufacturers and operators are constantly trying to obtain higher performance and longer life from their production equipment. To meet these demands, Scandrive AB in Sweden has developed the GREG PS50 phase-shifting actuator.
This design comes into its own in sophisticated machines where several axles or rollers have to be synchronised precisely. A frequent need in industrial machinery is to control accurately the relative phasing of several shafts synchronised by a common drive shaft. The Scandrive design overcomes some of the disadvantages experienced with traditional approaches to phase control.
"Conventional phase control systems cannot offer the 360o phase shift that the GREG PS 50 provides", says Ulf Rilbe, managing director of Scandrive AB. This offers significant time savings and other advantages where machines need to be set up in a number of configurations for different jobs, for example. In addition, changes can be set up remotely and automatically.
In operation, the GREG PS 50 is used as the coupling between the drive and the driven cylinder and is controlled by a small stepper motor that allows precise phase changes. The register resolution can be in the sub-micron range for a single step of the motor. Once the required adjustment has been made, the stepper motor is left at rest and the actuator can now be regarded as a stiff coupling transmitting all of the input speed and torque to the driven cylinder. This results in virtually no power loss or heat generation and an efficiency rating of more than 99 per cent.
Since the main components are at rest for around 95 per cent of the time, wear is reduced dramatically when compared with other phase control options. In addition, the phase shifting actuator offers the opportunity for down-sizing of the main motors and associated drive systems.
This actuator has potential in a number of application areas such as in the printing and graphics industry, general machinery and process industries.

Low maintenance
"The compact design of the GREG actuators has few components to fail and is a maintenance-free system", says Ulf Rilbe. This offers equipment manufacturers and operators components that have low maintenance and long service intervals.
Set up in 1989 as part of the Trustor group, the company's sales have grown to more than 20 million Swedish kronor thanks to rapid growth in the US, UK, Germany, France, Sweden and Japan.
The company has become established in the printing and graphics industry through its range of high precision reduction gears, actuators, self-oscillating rollers and related products.

Caption: The attraction of the Scandrive actuators are high precision packed into a compact, maintenance-free design.

For more information contact:
Innotek Engineered Products
Parke Killinger, VP of Specialty Sales
14630 - 28th Ave North
Minneapolis, MN 55447, USA
Phone: 630-545-9700
Fax: 630-545-9790

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