Ferranti Plc

Peter G Moore

John D Davidson

A servo system 10 (FIG. 1) for positioning a sighting mirror 11 connected to a pulley 16 comprises a drive motor 13 rigidly connected to a drive pulley 15 in turn coupled by a tensioned drive belt to the pulley 16. Angular position of the motor or pulley 15 is measured by sensor 18 and passed by way of phase advance network 19 and amplifier 21 to produce an error signal for the drive motor. The pulley 16 is outside of the servo loop and any oscillations induced in the tensioned belt at its resonant frequency, possibly originating from electrical noise in the servo loop, will be uncontrollable. To avoid such oscillation and retain a simple construction the belt tension is set (25) to a value producing a belt resonant frequency outside the operating bandwidth of the servo system and the feedback loop includes a notch filter 20 tuned to the belt resonant frequency which prevents electrical noise in the system from inducing along-axis oscillation of the drive belt and consequential position jittering of the mirror sightline.

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Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Peter G Moore