Development and Innovative Designs in Actuator For Instrument Clusters

Most of today’s Instrument clusters are using a mix of analog and digital gauges. As a replacement of traditional analog cross-coil gauges, Sonceboz Automotive SA has developed a series of miniature stepper motors, well suited for efficient high volume production. Beside the advantage of size and weight, this motor can be digitally driven by the output signal of a microprocessor, preserving the smooth motion characteristics and contributing to overall system cost reduction. Sonceboz Automotive SA is still bringing innovative concepts to the market such as shaftless design with pointer illumination directly through a translucent shaft, dual stepper with concentric shafts, as well as solderless mounting of the motor on the PCB. These design evolutions allow system cost reductions and new design possibilities for the dashboard applications. This presentation will explain in details the different design and industrialisation highlights of these stepper motors.