Manu Prakash, 8 April 2004
manup@mit.edu

How to choose actuators for an application

It is always very important to choose the right actuators/motors for your machine design. Though very tempting to design a machine leaving the controls to the electrical engineer to figure out, it will not really work. The choice is tightly linked with the mechanical design and functional requirements of a specific machine. In this topic we will try to demistify this choice and cover a large number of actuators used in most common devices.

Class Presentation (pdf link) : Choosing the right actuator

A refrence paper by Faulhaber Group: How to select a DC micromotor

Resources from Prof. Slocum's group :
Lecture on Torque and Power : 2.007 Link
Excel sheetsExcel sheet for calculating the required motor torque, power and power rate
Additional Excel sheets Link
Chapter 7 Actuators , Precision Machine Design Link


Last updated 8th april 2004