Clutches and brakes are very crucial in motion designs that are required to stop, index or hold loads. In the last few years, specific application designs have increased in an effort for several industries to push the established limits of stock components. When choosing clutches and brakes you need to first understand their difference. While brakes are used for stopping a rotating load, clutches are used for transferring torque. There are many types of clutches and brakes. Brakes are commonly used in applications where the load needs to be stopped accurately and for the motor to stop also. Clutches on the other hand are used in applications where the load and the motor needs to be engaged or disengaged by the engineer while the motor continues to run throughout. While using a clutch, the load can stop easily without much effort. A combination of both the clutch and the brake can be used when the load is started and stopped even as the motor is still rotating. Both of them can also be based mounted to a motor and load through a chain drive, belt drive or coupling.
The other step when choosing clutches and brakes is to consider match to power motor. Motor horsepower is very key when it comes to selecting a certain type of brake or clutch. Revolutions Per minute can be determined when it comes to base mounted units where the brake or clutch is to mount. A quick selection chart is provided by the manufacturer listing the unit sizes. This can help engineers to find the interchange of speed and motor horsepower at the clutch shaft in order to establish the size. The torque capacity for the motor and dynamic torque capacity for the product is what most of these charts uses as well as an overload element of some value. The assumption of this method is that you have chosen a motor whose size is appropriate to the application. You should talk to the application manufacturer’s support system where you might consider the cycle rates for the load inertia aggressive in regards to the brake or clutch heat dissipation ability.
Determining the motor frame size is the other step you need to take when choosing a clutch or brake. In some instances, a particular motor horsepower might contain several frame size for selection. Since this can have an impact to the shaft size, it is therefore important to know more about it. Just as manufacturers provides charts for speed and identification of horsepower, they also provide ones that list frame size and unit size. You Need to decide this factor in advance since unit shaft size is determined by frame size.
The other step should be to determine unit mounting. Both the brakes and clutches can either be base mounted or mounted to the motor shaft and load through chain drive, belt drive or coupling. And lastly, you should also consider coil voltage when choosing brakes and clutches. There are several options for you to choose when it comes to coil voltage. No matter your choice, you can be provided with power supplies by the manufacturer in order to convert alternating current to direct current if necessary.