Heidenhain Acquires AMO

Heidenhain has acquired AMO GmbH, an Austrian specialty encoder company. With this acquisition, Heidenhain will coordinate AMO sales operations and products for North America at the parent company’s U.S. location in Schaumburg, Illinois. Encoder production and engineering will remain in Austria.

AMO is known for meeting precision feedback requirements in applications where high resolution is needed. The company has had particular success in highly contaminated machine environments, such as in automation, medical and semiconductor applications, as well as some metal-forming, bending and manual machine tool applications. The company’s inductive-based encoders can survive many types of rough environments including coolants, slurries, high vibration and heavy dust particles without compromising accuracy or resolution.

AMO offers both linear and angular encoders available in many lengths and diameters. The linear encoders come in exposed-kit or bearing-guided versions. The angular encoders are produced with either a thin tape with no joining seam or as a drum type. Both make for easy installation onto various shaft sizes. The encoders are available in absolute versions with Biss C, FANUC, Mitsubishi, Yaskawa and EnDat interfaces. There are also incremental versions with 1 Vpp and TTL.