Miniaturized Electrical Motor Controller for harsh environments, MINI-EMC, 6990, ÅAC Microtec

Purpose and goal

The Mini-EMC project targets development of a new range of motorized products suitable for extreme environments in volume-constrained applications within niche fields such as offshore deep drilling, mining, vehicle and industrial applications. In a collaboration between ÅAC (Sweden) and CSEM (Switzerland), a high temperature tolerant electronic motor controller has been developed. The hardware designed by ÅAC makes use of very recently released semiconductor parts, and CSEM have provided an advanced motor control software.

Expected results and effects

A highly interested industry partner has provided technical requirements and successfully performed independent testing of the prototype version. A strong market demand for a high temperature motor controller has been observed, and similar products currently available have limitations in terms of size optimization and temperature range. The test results and design experience gained from the Mini-EMC project paves the way forward to a possible productification om the controller.

Planned approach and implementation

With clearly defined roles in the development process, the collaboration between the partners has run smoothly with the geographical distance being of little importance. CSEM have been provided with preliminary hardware early in the project in order to proceed with the software development, and to give suggestions about hardware updates, in parallel with the design work for the final electronics done by ÅAC. We have travelled for meetings, but to a greater extent communicated through telephone and video conferences.