Protection Options
Washdown Protection
Our washdown protection option for actuators can be used in applications where water ingress protection, corrosion resistance, and leak contamination prevention are paramount. Rotomation also offers fluoroelastomer (FKM) seals for washing down with high-temperature caustic cleaning solutions. Shaft seals are built into the body or integral cover plates, cylinders are sealed by O-rings, and assembly threads are sealed. We use stainless shafts with anodized body and end caps. Also available are hard chrome-plated shafts and electroless nickel-plated body and end caps. See diagram.
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Stainless Steel
We also provide stainless steel actuators with special PTFE and/or fluroelastomer seals to prevent entry of corrosive materials and preserve piston seals and vital lubrication.
Special stainless steel A42 rotary actuator. Mouse over image to see the standard actuator with aluminum parts.
The very compact AL 75, with its inherent soft start and stop.
A long-stroke PA2.
Note the easily cleaned, uniform finish. The reliability and durability of these units largely eliminate the remove-and-replace production interruptions needed for units with less chemical resistance. We can produce just about any of our actuators in a suitable stainless alloy upon request. When nothing else will hold up, your customers will save money going with stainless steel.
Solutions That Fit Your Specific Needs
Rotomation offers extreme flexibility in options for you to configure your actuator to suit your needs exactly, rather than compromising your design to accommodate a one-size-fits-all actuator. Many times a simple modification to the shaft size, projection, or machined features such as keyways, flats, thru holes, etc., can improve your product and reduce cost. Or, you might need the actuator's main body and end caps to be made of an alternative material like stainless steel or plastic, instead of the standard anodized aluminum alloy. A custom mounting hole pattern might make our actuator drop into your current setup. Rotomation understands your needs and is dedicated to providing solutions that allow you to optimize your design.
Indexing Drives For Automation
There are many applications in automation calling for repetitive rotary indexing. Some examples:
- star wheels
- conveyors
- escapements
- parts positioning for labeling, machining, inspection, etc.
- dispensing
There are at least three types of indexing drives that the engineer can choose between for these applications:
- Mechanical cam based drive
- Electrical servo based drive conveyors
- Pneumatic indexing drive
Cam Drives
Cam drives have been used for many years and are capable of good accuracy and dynamic control, high speed, and heavy loads. They are typically driven by a gearmotor, with one revolution of the input for each incremental motion of the output. They are best suited for continuous indexing which does not require the motor to be started and stopped for each cycle.
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Servo Based Indexing Drives
A servo based indexing drive for such an application will include a servomotor with or without a gearbox, an encoder for position feedback, a motion controller, and an amplifier. Some of these components may be combined into integrated packages. There is normally a system controller overseeing the motion control, including human interface.
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Pneumatic Indexing Drives
Pneumatic indexing drives, such as our indexing actuators, are simple, mechanical components capable of repetitive rotary indexing with no accumulating error. They are based on rack-and-pinion rotary actuators with the addition of one-way roller clutches and a ratchet and pawl system for stopping and registration. The motion is initiated by a directional control valve, so they are well suited to flexible automation where the index must occur on demand. They are robust and durable, but cannot match the controlled motion characteristics of the servo or cam drives.
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Energy Consumption
The relative amount of energy these drives consume will depend on the duty cycle of the application. Cam and servo drives are both quite efficient but differ in that the servo uses full power to hold the load in place whereas the cam drive uses power only when driving the load. A pneumatic indexer uses compressed air, which is less efficient than an electric motor drive, but also uses no power when in the locked condition. So, if the duty cycle includes a high percentage of dwell time, the advantage shifts toward the cam and pneumatic systems.
If you have any questions for our engineers regarding our indexing actuators, call us at 386-676-6377 or
What Services Can You Expect?
Rotomation is dedicated to your success, so we provide the best customer service we can. When you do business with Rotomation, you get specialized engineering services, personalized customer service and targeted technical support. Whether you need a quote, help with an actuator, or a return material authorization (RMA) number, we will address your inquiry immediately if you call during regular business hours (M-F 8:00 am-5:30 pm ET). If you call outside business hours, we will call you immediately upon returning.
Basic Services
Your needs go beyond purchasing an actuator, so we provide services to prospective and current customers at no additional charge. Some of our basic complimentary services are:
Actuator selection and sizing assistance
If you need help in determing which type of actuator to use for your application, or the appropriate size to handle your load properly, we can help make sure the actuator you buy is the one you need.
Actuator cross-referencing
We help you choose a suitable Rotomation actuator to replace a competitor's unit and can match critical characteristics to save you time and money.
Price listing
You can get current list prices on any specific configuration on either standard or special actuators.
Integration and installation assistance
We provide you with the information you need to integrate, install and operate our products, or to adapt them to your load or operating conditions, or will suggest alternatives.
Order tracking
You can get your order status at any stage.
Distributor relations
Our distributors were carefully selected due to their capabilities, track record and high standards. If you ever have any questions about any of our distributors, please contact us.
Troubleshooting guidance
We will help you with any issues using our actuators with your application, guide you through critical initial steps to determine the root cause, and provide you with specific suggestions to prevent future reoccurrence. We will stand by your side until your actuator issues are fully resolved, and you're back in business.
Lead times
We estimate lead times at the quoting stage, but will calculate an actual time for a specific actuator configuration upon request. You will get an actual ship date upon our receipt of your order. We stock most of the parts used for our standard actuators. So we can build actuators to order promptly, and also ship replacement parts and seal repair kits (SRK) the next day if necessary.
Special actuator design
We will help you determine any modifications and additional parts required in order to make our actuator fit your application. If a simple modification won't do, we will help you establish specifications and requirements to develop a unique special actuator for your application.
Testing services
We test 100% of the actuators we sell before shipment to assure conformance to published ratings and specifications. If you need us to perform additional testing of any nature, we will be glad to setup special testing for your actuator. Our capabilities include, but are not limited to, performance, life cycle, and leak tests.
CAD files
If you can't find the CAD files you need in our online configurators, we will create and send them to you.
Supporting documents
If you need further documentation, we will send you any you need to install, operate, or troubleshoot our actuators.
What Are the Benefits To You?
Rotomation is dedicated to providing value-added solutions for our customers and we thrive with their success. We are a customer-focused operation, always accessible for our distributors and end users. Below a few benefits our customers enjoy.
High Quality Products
Rotomation actuators are designed for high cycle rates and long life expectancy. We stand behind our products with a basic 2-year limited warranty. Our actuators typically run for tens of millions of cycles and are also fully rebuildable. Our factory's repair service will restore your actuator to its full functional integrity, adding millions more duty cycles. It's like buying a new actuator at a fraction of the price of a new unit. Invest in our products and get your ROI many times over!
We often hear from our customers who have a Rotomation actuator which has been in service for ten, twenty, or thirty years and is starting to show its age. They are sometimes surprised to hear that we support nearly all of our old products, and that our current models will drop in place of the old ones, despite improvements made to every component for even longer life. Each unit is serialized and we maintain records of every actuator indefinitely.
See our "Unique" featured article for more information regarding our products.
Solutions that Fit your Specific Needs
Rotomation offers extreme flexibility in options so that you can configure your actuator to suit your needs exactly, rather than compromising your design to accommodate a one-size-fits-all actuator from our competition. Many times a simple modification to the shaft size, projection, or machined features such as keyways, flats, thru holes, etc. can improve your product and/or reduce cost. Or, you might need the actuator's main body and end caps to be made of an alternative material like stainless steel or plastic, instead of the standard anodized aluminum alloy. A custom mounting hole pattern might make our actuator drop into your current setup. Rotomation understands your needs and is dedicated to providing solutions that allow you to optimize your design.
See our "Special Actuators" section for more information about our capabilities and some examples.
Special stainless steel A42 rotary actuator. Mouse over image to see standard actuator (with aluminum parts).
We are Here for You
When you call Rotomation during business hours, you will speak to a person, not to an automated switchboard. Our engineers are eager to collaborate with design and application engineers to help them size, configure, specify, and integrate our products successfully. If we don't have a suitable product, we will do our best to suggest one from one of our worthy competitors. Whether you are looking for a one-off or for hundreds of actuators, you will receive the same support and attention.
See our "Service" featured article for more information.
Worldwide Distribution with Local Representation in USA
A network of distributors across the United States offer Rotomation products, along with complimentary components for use in industrial automation. Knowledgeable salespeople and applications engineers can save you precious time and money by introducing your engineers to the newest products and solutions available on the market. Whether you contact us directly or our distributor initially, you will get the best of both companies with superior customer service and local targeted support.
To find contact information of distributor(s) serving your area, please visit the "Where to Buy" section and select your location.
Technology that Drives Improvement
Rotomation continuously improves its products and operations in order to remain a leader in the automation industry and provide the latest actuation technology with the highest possible degree of quality. We design, evaluate, and simulate our parts and products using cutting edge CAD software and generate machine programs with our model-feature-based CAM software that are transferred directly to one of many CNC machines in our state-of-the-art facility to produce our parts and products efficiently and with consistent results.
Experienced Team of Professionals
Rotomation employees have an average of more than 18 years with the company, making craftsmanship, expertise, and personal responsibility key elements of our production. They've witnessed the progression of our product line throughout the years and have learned the tricks of the trade, making them crucial to our company's continuous success. With a diverse range of cultural backgrounds, our team of highly skilled professionals is key in fostering improvement to our daily operations and sustaining product quality.
Proudly Made in USA, Responsibly!
Rotomation operates from a custom-built facility in beautiful Ormond Beach, Florida. Not only we are an American-born enterprise but we also make environmental responsibility our priority. We believe that alternative energy is fundamental to reducing our carbon footprint and that’s why we recently installed a 35 kW solar photovoltaic system array that provides about half the power needed for our manufacturing facility. We diligently pursue other important environmental initiatives including use of environmentally-safe products in our daily operations including biodegradable machine coolant and cleaning agents. We also make sure all scrap materials, whether from production or shipping are recycled and/or reused properly, just like all other waste produced.
What's Unique About Us?
Rotomation manufactures high speed, heavy duty pneumatic actuators that produce several shaft motions. All products are extremely configurable, which separate us from our competitors and give users maximum flexibility in their design. Another unique advantage we have is our ability of supplying special actuators quickly and at a reasonable price.
Unique Products
Like all of our competitors, we have a basic line of bidirectional actuators that rotate between two positions. Like some of our competitors, we also carry a line of multi-position actuators that rotate between three, four, or five positions in any sequence and a line of multi-motion actuators that combine linear stroke with rotary motion, independently-controlled but all in one actuator. But here are a few aspects that set us apart from our competitors.
We offer a line of unidirectional actuators that rotate in increments and prevent backward rotation. These actuators are divided in two main families, stepping and indexing.
Our family of compact actuators include a variety of rotary actuators such as our A032, that provide more torque and bearing capacity than any other actuator of similar size on the market, our AL75 with its characteristic slow start/stop motion inherited from its patented drive mechanism that is unlike any other rotary actuator we offer. Image below shows a group shot of our three compact rotary actuators.
Unique Quality
All our actuators are manufactured with the highest degree of quality, surpassing the industry standard. Our pneumatic actuators are therefore capable of high speed cycle rates and feature an inherent heavy duty construction, only matched by hydraulic actuators. Our actuators are used in harsh environments such as in metal working applications, electronic and mechanical assembly applications, demanding testing applications, food packaging applications, and semi-automated bakery production lines, among others. Our actuators are so reliable and durable that they are very popular among the automotive, semiconductor, food, and pharmaceutical industries.
We use nothing but the best and highest quality materials available in our product lines and always design for maximum ruggedness, reliability and durability. Materials such as 2024 aluminum and 4150 heat-treated steel are commonly used in the manufacturing of our parts and we use the latest and greatest coatings and treatments to ensure maximum endurance. We also offer alternate materials to accommodate specialty applications requiring enhanced corrosion resistance and/or clean environments.
Unique Application
Whether your application requires a unique feature on a standard unit or a completely new actuator, we have a solution for your unique application. About 40% of the actuators we produce require some special feature or modification, or in some cases, they are completely new products, depending in the application and the customer's request. Click to see examples of our latest customized and/or custom-made actuators.
Unique Satisfaction
Our attention to detail and unique team of knowledgeable technicians and professionals stand behind the quality of our products to ensure your satisfaction and reliable performance for millions of duty cycles and years to come. Furthermore, our excellent sales and engineering team will guide you through the process of selecting and specifying your actuator to satisfy your specific needs, to help you meet and exceed your production expectations and be there for you if you need any kind of support along the way.
Here at Rotomation, Inc., you get targeted engineering services, personalized customer service and unique technical support, all included in the price of the actuator. So when you choose our products, you get our expertise; it's that simple!
Special Actuators
Rotomation welcomes requests for special actuators because we understand how they can save our customers money by reducing cost of extra parts or engineering time and/or improving their product or process. About 40% of the actuators we produce have some non-standard feature that improves our actuator's ability to adapt to the load and/or working conditions in order to better fit our customer's application.
For more specialized applications or actuators that do not conform to the same principles of our standard product line, our expert team of design engineers will work with you to establish specifications tailored to meet your specific requirements, then they will design, develop and test a new product from the ground up if required. Whether you need one unit or thousands, we will produce what you need quickly and at a reasonable price.
We assign a special code in the part number of every special actuator that points to a unique bill of material that contains all the specifications and modifications necessary to reproduce a specific special actuator to simplify reordering. Upon request, we can also declare a special actuator to be proprietary to the OEM or distributor who ordered it originally to protect their investment.
Custom-made Actuators
If your application requires an actuator completely different from the products we offer, in form and/or function, we have a solution for your application. Below is an example of a custom-made rotating gripper.
Customized Actuators
If your application requires a simple modification to one or more parts on one of our standard units or you need us to make one of our standard actuators in some other material due to special environmental requirements, we'll be glad to help you. See a few examples of recent customizations made for some of our customers below.
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Customized extra compact rotary actuator, based on our standard A752
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Special A032 rotary actuator with thru-shaft air feed and rear air manifold
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Special stainless steel A42 rotary actuator
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| Special X12 indexing actuator with integrated mount flange, 8mm diameter plated shaft, and pharmaceutical-grade PTFE shaft seal for clean room manufacturing environment |
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Special X3 indexing actuator with gripper adapter and integrated dual channel
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| Special setup for auto-run functionality - click on image for more information. |