Companies in this industry include manufacturers of heavy equipment used in agriculture, construction, and material handling as well as industrial drives and factory automation equipment and rail transportation.
Articles discussing opportunities, technical requirements, and design challenges for power electronics engineers in the industrial equipment industry:
PE Engineers Face Common Challenges In Motor Drive Design
By David G. Morrison, Editor, How2Power.com, April 2012
Motors drives represent a truly diverse field encompassing many different application areas--
everything from aerospace to appliances, automotive to industrial, and more. But despite the
many disparities among the end products, certain motor drive requirements and design issues are
shared by power electronics (PE) engineers working on different motor-drive applications. These
design requirements and issues include the demand for higher efficiency, whether to design with
modular or discrete components, preparing for the arrival of GaN and SiC devices, and learning
how to apply advanced control methods. In this article, two engineers knowledgeable about the
development of motion control ICs and their applications explain how these issues are among the
biggest motor-drive design challenges for PE engineers. (See pages 51-54 of the source PDF.) Read the full article»
A Diverse Drives Market Depends On PE Engineers
By David G. Morrison, Editor, How2Power.com, March 2012
The market for industrial drives encompasses a wide range of motor and motion control
applications. From fractional horsepower to 1000+ hp motors with widely varying voltage levels
and wide-ranging control requirements, industrial drives must serve a broad spectrum of needs
in powering all types of industrial machinery. On top of this diversity, there are some common
market pressures that add to the challenge of designing and manufacturing industrial drives.
These include demands for high efficiency, high reliability, long life expectancy, small size,
electromagnetic compliance (EMC), and low cost. In this article, executives from Emerson and
Rockwell Automation discuss how power electronics (PE) engineers who develop industrial drives
are working to evaluate and deploy the latest generation of power semiconductors, and to apply
new topology options such as active front ends. (See pages 41-47 of the source PDF.) Read the full article»
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