Conceptual design and modeling of a six degrees-of-freedom unlimited stroke magnetically levitated positioner

Magnetic levitation technology is a promising solution to achieve ultra-precision motion. This paper presents a novel conceptual design of a 6 degrees-of-freedom (DOF) magnetically levitated (maglev) planar positioner. The advantages of the proposed maglev positioner includes that, it is able to deliver unlimited planar motion stroke with good power efficiency, allow multi-translators simultaneously above the same stator and also with low system complexity. The proposed design employs four groups of 1D Halbach PM arrays and a set of square coils as the translator and stator, respectively. Furthermore, an analytical modeling approach is proposed to model the Lorenz force of the square coil accurately, which considers the corner area effect of the coil model. By controlling the currents energized in the coils underneath the Halbach PM array, the translator delivers the desired 6-DOF motions. Finally, FEA simulation is conducted to validate the accuracy of the proposed force model, and limited variance is observed.