Servo motors for individual needs
About the partnership between KEB Automation and Brusatori Electric Motors
In 2022, KEB Automation acquired a majority stake in Brusatori Electric Motors. The Italian company is known, among other things, for its DL4 high torque servo motors. For which machines and systems are these suitable and what fundamental advantages result from the cooperation between the two companies? Marco Sala, Managing Director of Brusatori Electric Motors, and Andrea Brusatori (third generation of the founding family) explain.
Brusatori, which has its headquarters in Milan, has been developing and producing electric motors since 1953. Initially, the focus was on asynchronous motors, but production was soon expanded to include DC and permanent magnet motors. With all the changes over the past decades, however, the claim to supply reliable components for motion applications and to ensure flexibility in adapting the electric machine to the customer's needs has remained.
After a previous three-year cooperation between KEB and Brusatori, the Barntrup-based company finally acquired a majority stake in the Italian motor specialist – a decision that offers added value both in terms of the product portfolio and parallels in corporate culture. “Although KEB and Brusatori differ in company size, they both share the same values and principles: High-quality products that meet the individual needs of the user and thus lead to a high level of satisfaction,” says Sala. In addition, Brusatori's motor technology is a fitting complement to KEB's holistically conceived system solutions. And Andrea Brusatori adds: “In combination with KEB drive controllers, the DL4 motors can deliver the best performance. The frequent customer request for an easy-to-operate 'total package' can be fulfilled by this. The good interaction of drives and motors can ultimately increase the productivity of customer machines.”
Highly dynamic servo motors
The DL4 series servo motors are now at the core of Brusatori's product range. These are motors designed to offer the highest dynamic performance in a compact package. The use of a triple-painted copper wire and neodymium-iron-boron magnets (rare-earth permanent magnets), as well as the high quality of the materials (lamination for the stator and rotor, aluminium for the housing and the covers of the motors) make the DL4 motors a very high-quality product. The low rotor inertias ensure the possibility of high acceleration and deceleration. Users have a choice of three different sizes, with air or liquid cooling. “The DL4 motors are available with torque from 5 Nm to 530 Nm and are developed, assembled and tested in Italy. We manufacture all components with our CNC machines in our factory in the Milanese municipality of Cuggiono,” says Brusatori.
With their characteristics, the DL4s are made for applications where precision and speed of movement are required. This makes the motor suitable for use in the plastics sector, for example - such as extruders or hydraulic presses for plastic injection. Other sectors are the printing industry with flexographic printing machines, the metal, wood or textile industry. In the renewable energy sector, the motors provide the right power for rotor blade adjustment.
The cooperation between KEB and Brusatori is bearing fruit on many levels. The verdict and outlook of Marco Sala, who has been in charge of Brusatori's business since mid-2022, is correspondingly positive. “2022 was an economically strong year for us - despite numerous difficulties in the procurement of raw materials, as we are all experiencing in the post-Covid era. We continue to work with colleagues in the KEB Group to analyse processes and introduce technology to measure the progress of our actions.”