Kollmorgen has extended its Essentials motion platform to support 400–480V three-phase power, the standard voltage in large industrial facilities.
Rather than forcing engineers to adopt highly complex, high-spec motion systems for every axis, the company argues that many axes handle only positioning or material handling and do not warrant top-end specifications.
By right-sizing solutions to match actual application needs, machine builders can reduce costs, shorten commissioning time, and simplify maintenance while still operating effectively in high-voltage environments.
What happened
Kollmorgen has expanded its Essentials motion platform to include high-voltage (400–480V) options, enabling it to work directly in standard industrial power environments without requiring additional infrastructure like transformers.
Why it matters
Machine builders in large manufacturing plants, automotive lines, and logistics hubs have traditionally assumed high-voltage operation demands overly complex, expensive systems. Kollmorgen argues that not every axis in a machine requires top-tier specifications—many handle only positioning or material handling—so over-specifying across the board increases costs, commissioning time, and maintenance difficulty. Right-sizing solutions for each axis allows engineers to optimize the whole machine rather than applying a uniform specification.
What to watch
Kollmorgen's Essentials platform now offers pre-matched motors and drives, streamlined commissioning with intuitive tools, and stock availability designed to shorten lead times. The company positions this scalable approach as letting machine builders apply a consistent methodology across different machines and environments without unnecessary complexity.
Ask the AI about this article →
The article presents a shift in how industrial motion systems are being designed and specified. Historically, when machine builders operated in high-voltage (400–480V) environments, the assumption was that they needed to adopt the most advanced, highest-performance motion platforms available. However, Kollmorgen challenges this logic by noting that larger machines and higher throughput place greater demands on only certain parts of the system, not all of it. Many axes handle relatively simple tasks like positioning or material handling, which do not warrant premium specifications.
The real cost of over-specifying, according to Kollmorgen, lies not just in upfront expenses but in engineering time, integration complexity, and long-term maintainability. Configuration, commissioning, and troubleshooting become more difficult and time-consuming when systems are more complex than necessary. By contrast, a "right-sized" approach—matching each axis's motion solution to its actual application needs—can reduce project timelines and total cost of ownership while still operating safely and effectively within the existing high-voltage infrastructure. Kollmorgen's expansion of Essentials to include high-voltage options exemplifies this strategy: the platform was originally built for simpler, medium-voltage applications but now brings that simplified, scalable design philosophy directly into the high-voltage domain where most large industrial facilities operate.
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