Did you know that the first Stepper Motors were made in 1905? They are commonly referred to as a Step Motor, Stepper Motor, and Stepping Motor. Even though 3 different terms are used, they all have the same meaning. Stepper Motors are used in many places in everyday life. Most watches have a stepping motor in them. Many 'analog' clocks actually have a step motor controlling the hands. That makes it a 'digital' clock after all. There are over 200 stepper motor manufacturers around the world. What separates Anaheim Automaiton between us and the rest of them is our high quality products, informative website, helpful and knowledgable application engineers, and our great customer service.

Stepper Motor Windings - there are three main types of Stepper Motor Windings, the Unipolar Stepper Motor, Bipolar Stepper Motor connected in series, and Bipolar Stepper Motor connected in parallel. Most hybrid stepper motor designs have coils no matter which winding configuration is made. The only difference between the different stepper motor windings is how the wires are connected internally to the windings. If 8 wires are brought out, then the stepper motor can be connected by any of these three winding methods.

A Brushless DC Electric Motors, commonly called a Brushless Motor is commutated electronically by a controller board. In a BLDC motor, permanent magnets are embedded in the rotor surrounded by electromagnets in the stator. The rotor does not make any contact with the stators so the life is mainly determined by the life of the bearings. An electronic BLDC Controller is required to control a Brushless DC Motor. Anaheim Automation offers a wide range of Brushless Controller products including brushless controller integrated circuits, speed controller boards. This line will continue to be expanded to provide a solution to almost every Brushless Motor application.

Since around 2000, the price for BLDC motors came down dramatically. With low cost manufacturing around the world, the Brushless Motors started to become more widely used in applications that previously used other technologies. The Brushless Motor is especially being used in place of the typical DC Motor that contains brushes. The BLDC motors offer higher efficiency, reliability, reduced noise, lower EMI emissions, and have a much longer lifetime when compared to DC motors.

A Servo Motor and Amplifier is one of the most sophisticated motor and electronic systems. The word 'Servo' came from the French "Le Servomoteur" which means slave motor. This was first used by Farcot in 1868 to describe the hydraulic and steam engines used in steering ships. The term servo is commonly used to describe any system that uses error-sensing feedback to correct or improve the performance of a mechanism. Anaheim Automation has a broad line of Servo Motors, Servo Amplifiers, Servo Drives, and Servo Controllers. The price of Servo motor products has continued to rapidly decline as the technology advances and lower cost global production is utilized.

If you use a DC Motor or DC Motors today, you have Michael Faraday to thank for figuring out how to convert electrical energy into motion in 1821. He didn't make the DC Motor alone though — he set out to prove what Oersted and Ampere hypothesized and proved it by having an electric wire rotate around a magnet, then a magnet rotate around an electric wire. Thus almost 200 years later, Anaheim Automation has hundreds of DC motors to offer for your motion control applications. Our DC motors are designed to offer you extremely high value — maintaining high quality and performance but always driving to keep costs to a minimum. Check out our broad DC Motor product line.

AC Motors are probably the most common type of motor. You will find the AC Motor used in many different applications. In your house you probably have ac motors in most of your electronic appliances. The best feature of an AC Motor is that you can connect the power from your AC outlet directly to the motor and it will turn. There is not an additional need for a power supply - the AC Motors work by just connecting them to the AC power.

Linear Guide A linear guide comes by many names - linear motion bearing, profile rail, linear bearing, linear slide, profile bearing, profile guide, linear ball bearing, and many more similar versions. The purpose of a linear guide is to provide motion in one dimension with as little friction as possible. There are ball bearings in the chain running across the profile rail. All linear slides provide linear motion from bearings. Anaheim Automation linear guides use recirculating ball bearings.

Linear Systems are composed of completely linear items, or a mix of rotational and linear items. A motor and a ball screw can be used to translate rotary motion into linear motion. Anaheim Automation offers a wide range of XY tables, linear slides, linear tables, and linear stages.

The curious name for the Planetary Gearbox was derived by its mechanical construction. In a typical planetary gearbox, there are three gears (the planet gears) that rotate around a central gear (the sun gear). Planetary gearboxes are also known as servo gearboxes, or servo gearheads. A gearhead is the same as a gearbox. Planetary gearheads come in many different sizes and several quality levels. Some are made with precision honed gears, while others are made with sintered metal gears, and even plastic gears. Anaheim Automation offers a wide variety of planetary gear head products to match the quality and price that your application demands.