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= Physik Instrumente = Physik Instrumente (PI) is a German, privately owned industrial company that was founded in 1970 by the physicist Karl Spanner and other shareholders as spin-off from the Max Planck Society. The Karlsruhe com

pany supplies nanometer-precision positioning technology.

During the founding years, research and higher education were the main customers of the company. In the meantime the company in Karlsruhe now serves the Semiconductor technology, automotive industry, biotech business sectors as well as  mechanical engineering,  biomedical engineering, and  process manufacturing.

PI has been developing and manufacturing standard and OEM products with piezo or motor drives for more than 40 years. In addition to four locations in Germany, the PI Group is represented internationally by fifteen sales and service subsidiaries. The youngest member of the Physik Instrumente Group is ACS Motion Control, a company in Israel that joined the group in 2017.



History and structure
The company headquarters is in Karlsruhe, which is in the federal state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany. The company is privately managed and enjoys healthy growth. There are four production sites in Germany:


 * Karlsruhe, Baden-Wuerttemberg: Headquarters (since 1977). Technology center and production. Areas of focus: Positioning technology with different drive types, control technology, software, system construction, sales
 * Eschbach, Baden-Wuerttemberg: Location of the subsidiary PI miCos (since 2011), formerly micos GmbH. technology development and production of magnetic drive systems
 * Rosenheim, Bavaria: Development and production of control electronics
 * Lederhose, Thuringia: Location of the subsidiary PI Ceramic (since 1992). Center of development for and production of piezoelectric components and actuators
 * Further production sites:
 * Auburn, Massachusetts, USA: PI USA (since 1987). Customized systems
 * Hopkinton, Massachusetts, USA: Formerly Nelson Air (since 2015). Development and production of air bearing technology
 * Shanghai, China: Development and production of positioning technology, sensor technology and controllers
 * Migdal Ha-Emek, Israel: ACS Motion Control (since 2016). Development and production of industrial controllers



Technologie
Since the 1970s, the focus at PI has been on the use of piezo technology as a drive system for technology.

PI (Physik Instrumente) depends on in-house vertical integration as well as in-depth production and technology. It was particularly the piezo technology that led to the foundation of the PI Ceramic subsidiary in 1992, which manufactures the piezo components and piezo actuators that are built into the nanopositioning products of PI.

In the last few years, PI has put its focus on new key areas outside of piezo technology and extended its own development and research into the fields of linear motors and related technologies. Related technologies such as air bearing and industrial controllers were supported by acquiring other companies.

Business sectors
The technologies from Physik Instrumente are used in various different applications in industry and science. PI's markets and applications are:


 * Photonics
 * Semiconductor technology
 * Industrial automation
 * Mechanical engineering
 * Measuring technology
 * Scientific instrumentation / Research facilities
 * Astronomy
 * Biomedical engineering
 * Microscopy
 * Additive manufacturing

Applications
Since the seventies, the automotive industry all over the world has been putting its trust in industrial robots .In the past, robots and production staff worked separately from each other. Today, it is perfectly normal to see both robots and hexapods working together on the production line. Car manufacturers use the parallel-kinematic system in conjunction with the classical industrial robots. The precision motion and positioning of the hexapod compensates any inaccuracies of the robot arm. The hexapod then positions a car door for example, and the production line staff can continue with performing the manual work steps. This allows loads to be positioned with micrometer accuracy. The Webinar  in the specialist magazine elektrotechnik.de provides more information on that.

In the past, it was not possible to make use of commercially available plastic granulate for the additive manufacturing. The mechanical engineers at Arburg did some research and now rely on piezo technology for their freeform plastic molding, which now makes the use of standard granulate possible. A membrane with piezo technology enables fast opening and closing motion and, under pressure, generates small plastic droplets with 0.2 to 0.4 mm diameter. These join together, melt partially, and build the three-dimensional plastic part layer-by-layer.

Fluids and solids in the silo need to be checked regularly. The level measurement is based on the principle of runtime measuring of an aerial ultrasound impulse transmitted and then reflected back by the filling. The accuracy depends on how well the ultrasonic impulse is reflected from the respective surface. The piezo transducers are placed outside the medium to be detected and function both as a transmitter and receiver. Measuring is done without making contact and there is no contamination.

Scientists use a synchrotron beam to examine ultrathin layers from the semiconductor industry or highly diluted biological samples. In this sense, researchers refer to quantitative spectroscopic analysis. An X-ray lens focuses the incident synchrotron beam onto a sample, which then radiates light in the X-ray range. The system setup from Physik Instrumente supplies a kinematic carrier platform for examining the material.

PICMA actuators are yet another application scenario. They put the electrons onto the right paths in beamline applications. The actuators ensure dynamic compensation of the Lorentz forces acting on the accelerator elements in a cryogenic environment. The actuators are used in the German Electron Synchrotron in Hamburg.

XZ tracking systems control the optical X-ray slots in the Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility in order to prepare the beam for the experiments. The XZ systems consist of two motor drive screws one above each other, which were made especially for the project. They can carry loads of up to more than 800 N over 50 mm (X) × 20 mm (Z). The stages are equipped with 2-phase stepper motors and are self-locking.

Use in astronomy: To compensate imaging errors caused by deviation of large segmented primary mirrors from the required paraboloid shape, the actuators must align the mirror segments to each other at a fraction of the light's wavelength. Hybrid drives, which combine a drive screw motor drive with a piezoelectric actuator, are able to fulfill those specifications. The European Extremely Large Telescope of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) will have a segmented main mirror with a diameter of 39 m and a light collection area of almost 1000 m² and will be the largest telescope for scientific evaluation of electromagnetic radiation in the visible and near-infrared wavelength range.

Researchers use nanofocusing drives for nanometer-precision positioning of microscope objectives such as for example, autofocusing or to allow recording of a focusing series. The piezo effect is responsible for the motion of the drives and the drives themselves are screwed between the revolver and objective, which as a result, prolongs the optical beam path by 13 mm or respectively by 12.5 mm in the case of the closed-loop models.

Manufacturing
PI manufactures in seven autonomous organizational units, so-called fractals. Each fractal is responsible for its own product line and is equipped with all necessary production equipment. It operates independently and controls all processes from the receipt of order and materials procurement through assembly and quality testing up to dispatch. The fractals have the following advantages:

1.   Faster and more flexible adaptation of production to customer requirements

2.   Faster implementation of customized solutions

3.   Shorter lead times due to shorter processing times "The concept of the fractal factory" as described by Mr. Warnecke is more relevant than ever and gives a real sense of purpose to a large number of companies in the manufacturing industry in Germany as well as the rest of the world", explains Professor Thomas Bauernhansl, Head of the Fraunhofer IPA Institute. PI has a heavy-load hall for assembling and measuring masses up to five tons. Here, three gantry cranes span the working area to lift and transport the components of the positioning systems. A ground granite slab with a flatness of 3.8 µm serves as assembly area. Air-cushioning elements decouple the granite slab from external vibration. This allows the axes to be aligned accurately during assembly. The lifting and rotating equipment allows payloads up to seven tons to be rotated smoothly around 360°. This makes it possible for example, to qualify behavior and specification of heavy-duty hexapods under realistic load conditions.