Electrical Design

Control Circuit

The actuators are normally controlled using a provided control box and mechanical handset. Each control box and handset can control up to 5 actuators at a time. To control the forward and reverse motion of the actuators, the mechanical buttons on the handset are replaced with electrical switches (transistors). To control the forward and reverse directions of 30 actuators, 60 control signals are used.

Power Circuit

The operation of a single actuator requires 24 VDC and 4 A, with a corresponding power consumption of 96 W. If all 30 actuators are used simultaneously, the total power consumption would be 2880 W, which is very large. Therefore, only 6 actuators (one from each control box) are controlled at a time with the use of mechanical relays and demultiplexers. This cuts the power consumption to 576 W, which is a reasonable amount.