Valentine’s Day is coming up, a fact that you’re well aware of if you’ve happened to step foot in a store or check up on your social media over the past few weeks. Hearts have been pasted on our smartphone screens in the form of advertisements, and they’ve taken over the shelves in shops and grocery stores. Maybe you’ve even added some festive hearts to your packaging in order to make it look a little more amorous.
Hearts are symbolic of love, which is why they are so abundant this time of year. Valentine’s Day is a time to express love – romantic, platonic, or otherwise – and it could not land in a more appropriate month.
American Heart Month
February is American Heart Month, which has nothing to do with love, but everything to do with the human heart. We normally focus on servomotors, robotics, and things of that nature rather than matters of the heart, but it just so happens that we live in a time when servomotors and hearts can go hand-in-hand.
We’re speaking, of course, about robotic heart surgery.
Before you get carried away in thinking that there are automated robots that just poke around in people’s chest cavities willy nilly, robotic heart surgery is still performed by a cardiac surgeon. The surgeon simply uses a specially-designed computer console and thin robotic arms to perform the operation. Through motion control, these surgeons are able to perform closed-chest heart surgeries that are safer for the patient and less likely to cause complications.
Needless to say, the servos and motion control used in heart surgery are quite different from the servos and motion control used in industrial automation. While industrial motion control is certainly precise, the margin of error in surgery is significantly smaller than the margin of error in manufacturing, meaning that the motion control used in heart surgery has to be as exact and precise as possible.
Indramat motion control is famous for precision, but specifically for the combination of precision and power that allow you to run a printing press or machine tool cutter.
Indramat never made servos for surgery, but they did make some incredible servos for industry. If you have any repair, replacement, or service needs, give us a call today!