DA 26 rotary actuation product

Volz DA 26 is a rotary actuator (servo actuator) from Volz Servos for unmanned aircraft and advanced air mobility platforms. It converts a control command into a precise angular movement of its output shaft, and it is built around a brushless motor with a contactless, wear-free position sensor, so there are no brushes to wear or to cause EMI from sparking.

The actuator is designed for flight control surfaces and similar mechanisms on UAVs, and it is used, for instance, in the Schiebel Camcopter S100. Endurance tests have exceeded 3 million cycles (more than 2,000 hours), and successful tests based on MIL-STD 810F (vibration) and 810G (acceleration/shock) have been performed.

The main figures, listed for the DA 26-30-5024 variant, are as follows. The supply voltage range is 12 to 32 V, with a rated voltage of 28 VDC. Rated current is 0.8 A and peak current is 1.3 A. Rated torque is 2.7 Nm and peak torque is 5 Nm. No-load speed is 290 degrees per second and rated speed is 200 degrees per second, which together set how quickly a surface can be moved and how much hinge moment it can hold. The housing is 26 mm wide.

Mechanically, the housing is made of saltwater-resistant aluminum with a hard-coat treatment and meets the IP67 standard for water and dust sealing. Brackets integrated in the housing allow horizontal and vertical assembly. The transmission is a six-fold, ball-bearing supported steel gear train, and the drive shaft has an ANSI multi-tooth profile, with a square drive shaft available on request. The electrical connection is an integrated Sub-D connector, with a MIL-spec circular connector or cable gland on request.

Control interfaces: the standard version has a PWM input with two interfaces, a differential, galvanically isolated opto-coupler input and a single-ended CMOS-level input that is also used to program servo parameters, plus analog position feedback. A differential RS-422 PWM interface can replace the opto-coupler input. A version with an RS-485 serial command interface uses a CRC-secured protocol and returns shaft position, supply voltage, current consumption and motor and electronics temperature, with an optional humidity sensor, for health monitoring before, during and after deployment. Options include a redundant RS-485 interface with redundant power supply. Related variants are the DA 26-D (redundant) and DA 26-SUB (submersible). A MATLAB Simulink model, a datasheet and STEP files are available from the maker.