Fractional Horsepower Motors? Micro AC Gear motors? These all relate to the same range! But how?
In the early days, the engineers working at the Oriental Motor Company faced a recurring problem. Customers had so many different requirements for motorMotor For Shake Head Fan Suppliers and gearbox combinations, that it could be quite expensive to produce specially developed motors for each end-users unique requirements on a daily basis.
For larger customers the quantities could be built easily inexpensively, quickly and efficiently simply due to the large quantities, but for others, supplying motors for prototypes or small runs could become quite expensive and un-viable for the the large manufacturer to develop.
Faced with this problem, their designers after lengthy consideration and deliberation decided to create their own unique AC Motor Geared range to fill the gap left by independent manufacturers requiring many unique combinations of gearboxes and motors in smaller quantities.
To get past this design issue, they produced their brand new style of motors and gearboxes with common ratios from the zippy 3:1 ratio all the way to slower but high powered powered 200:1 ratio gearboxes, and coupled them to most requested ranges of small AC spur motors selected from 6 Watts AC through to 200 Watts AC. They chose Induction, Reversible, Speed Control and Electromagnetic Brake type motors.
To differentiate it at the time from products from other manufacturers they called the series, "The Standard Motor", though over the years they also came to be known as "Fractional Horsepower Motors".
This removed the requirement of the purchasing company needing to tell the Oriental designers the particular specifications for their intended purpose and have it custom created. Instead, the manufacturer could now simply look at a table of data provided directly by the motor supplier and choose the most suitable motor and gearbox combination for the wattage, motor type, speed and size best suited to their intended design.
And so, the Oriental Motor company could now offer a single range of products that could be built cheaply, in quantity and easily.
The range was huge success because there was simply no more waiting time.
Any company could order any quantity and have it within days rather than waiting months for the products to be delivered.
Following the popularity of the AC motors, the company quickly shifted their development team to a DC series and offered the same frame sized motors in DC 12v, 24v, 36v, 48v,90v and 180 Volts.
Since its inception, The Standard motor range has been copied by many companies over the years and is one of the most popular of all small geared AC and DC Motors available today. It is used in a multitude of products such as packaging machines, conveyor systems, automated shelving systems, pizza ovens, robotics and has more uses today than ever conceived by the original designers!
The range of Standard Motors are available in AC Single Phase, Three phase and DC with the major models being Induction, Reversible, Electromagnetic Brake and Speed Controlled motors.
Due to the immense success gained since these were first offered for sale, many duplicates of the motor exist and some take the idea far beyond the original design offering either a truly unique combination, including right angled gearboxes, worm drives and Planetary gears or further refinement through greater efficiency, and others simply try to duplicate as closely as the can possibly get to the original motor, or as close as they can get with the limitations of their machinery.
The Standard motors Are available from a variety of different companies and are mainly produced in Japan (Oriental, Panasonic), Taiwan (Sesame, GPG Motors), Korea(SPG), India and China (the list is exhaustive).
The overall build quality can be determined by any number of factors, the most influential being: Precision,Efficiency ratings, Materials used and the overall capacity and age of the manufacturers operating equipment.
