An electric servo drive is the control unit that powers and controls the movement of a servo motor and drive system. It regulates torque, speed, and position so machines can accelerate quickly and maintain a stable performance, before they slow down accurately and come to a controlled stop. This level of control is essential in machine and system building and helps engineering teams achieve accuracy, repeatability, and consistent product quality.
You’ll find servo drives across centralized and decentralized architectures, supporting everything from straightforward single‑axis positioning systems to complex rotary, cross, or multi‑axis ones. Modern versions go even further: they combine motion control with multi‑protocol communication and integrated safety functions, making them an excellent fit for today’s flexible, connected, and safety‑compliant machine designs.
Safety-certified servo drives play a crucial role in protecting operators, machines, and processes. As functional safety requirements increase, engineers need drive systems that deliver high performance while reducing risks at the operational level.
To support this, our electric drives with functional safety provide:
A broad range of safety functions helps machine builders meet demanding standards while keeping engineering efforts manageable. These include key functions such as:
Together, these functions provide safer commissioning, smoother operation, and greater flexibility when designing compliant machine architectures.
The CMMT‑AS‑S3 meets these increasing safety demands. It combines our motion control expertise with an extended set of certified safety functions. It thus offers a powerful, future‑ready option for OEMs who want to standardize on a safety‑certified servo drive without compromising performance or integration.
Our servo drives fit seamlessly into a wide range of control environments. They support PROFINET, EtherCAT, EtherNet/IP as well as other industrial networks, thus keeping communication consistent and avoiding the need for additional hardware. This flexibility makes it easier to reuse architectures and adapt to customer‑specific control systems.
An open, scalable design allows engineering teams to effortlessly integrate our drives into different automation environments. You can build on existing concepts, scale motion configurations and adapt control strategies while retaining the flexibility to choose the control ecosystem best suited to the machine.
Guided setup tools, integrated communication ports and clear parameter structures make it so much easier for teams to bring machines online quickly and reliably. While reduced wiring results in a cleaner installation, the real advantage lies in streamlined workflows that minimize effort, reduce sources of error and enable fast, confident commissioning.
At Festo you will find electric servo drives as servo drive controllers or stepper motor controllers.
The servo drive product range is specially designed for our servo motors, toothed belt axes and ball screw axes or electric cylinders. They are perfect in combination with engineering software and also benefit from complete safety solutions for mechanical and drive systems. Together with our automation platform and other comprehensive motion control solutions, the servo controllers provide a virtually unlimited range of solutions for industrial automation tasks. In this, they are supported by innovative software solutions for engineering and configuration. Thanks to the variety of available fieldbuses such as Ethernet/IP, EtherCAT®, PROFINET, Modbus® as well as CANopen and DeviceNet®, the servo controllers are ideally suited to communicate directly with almost all programmable logic controllers (PLCs).
The electric, multi-protocol capable servo drive CMMT-AS is included in our Core Range as a standard servo drive, and is one of the most compact servo drives on the market. It is characterized by precise force, speed and position control. The software makes commissioning quick and easy, and the required fieldbus variant can also be set individually.
Our motor controller CMMP-AS, on the other hand, is particularly well suited to decentralized motion functions thanks to its numerous interfaces and functions. Its standardized interfaces allow easy integration into the mechatronic multi-axis modular system.
Our stepper motor controller product range offers a simple and cost-effective way of implementing electrical movements; it makes moving and positioning easier than ever before – and is much more cost-effective than conventional electric solutions.
When it comes to tasks with low power requirements, the electric multi-protocol-capable servo drive CMMT-ST is very efficient and has proven itself especially in positioning tasks and point-to-point motion solutions. It is 50% more compact than our smallest servo drive controller CMMT-AS and therefore perfect for use in simple applications.
To ensure cost-effective and high-performance production, machines must meet key operational criteria. A well-designed motion control system helps:
These are the areas where electric drive systems and servo technology excel. Basic tasks can be handled by asynchronous motors with frequency inverters. But when applications demand higher precision, speed, and dynamic movement, servo systems come into play.
A motion controller communicates via fieldbus with servo drives (or servo controllers), synchronizing every movement in the machine. It enables everything from simple point-to-point motion to highly coordinated, multi-axis profiles—ideal for CNC applications or robotics.
A servo drive system is a closed-loop control architecture designed to regulate position, speed, acceleration, and torque in a mechanical application. It typically consists of:
The term servo motor refers to any motor type—synchronous, BLDC, asynchronous, or stepper—operating within a closed-loop system that adjusts in real time based on sensor input. The servo drive applies pulse-width modulation (PWM) to modify voltage and frequency, delivering precise torque profiles in response to feedback.
This continuous control loop ensures high accuracy, maintaining exact position and velocity—even under variable loads or fast cycle times.
In contrast, stepper motors typically operate in open-loop systems without feedback. While more affordable, they lack the precision and adaptability of servo-based systems when operating under dynamic or high-load conditions.
Modern servo drives are designed for seamless integration with PLCs and motion controllers through industry-standard fieldbus protocols such as EtherCAT®, PROFINET, Ethernet/IP, CANopen, and others—enabling advanced motion synchronization and CNC applications.
Selecting the right servo drive requires considering various mechanical, electrical, and control factors. These include load dynamics, positioning requirements, and system integration needs.
To simplify the process, tools like the Electric Motion Sizing app from Festo provide valuable support. By entering key application parameters—such as mass, stroke length, and cycle time—you receive a tailored proposal for a matching electric drive solution.
This makes it easier to explore compatible motors, mechanical axes, and servo drives, helping ensure accurate sizing from the start.