New helical-shape magnetic pole design for Magnetic Lead Screw enabling structure simplification

Magnetic Lead Screw (MLS) is a new type of high performance linear actuator that is attractive for many potential applications. Structure simplification is quite essential in promoting the MLS technology and the main difficulty of the MLS technology lies in the manufacturing of its complicated helical-shape magnetic poles. In this paper, a new type of structure is proposed for forming the required helical-shape magnetic poles in a much simpler way. It is demonstrated that traditional ring-shape magnetic poles, with proper rotating, can well approximate the complicated helical-shape magnetic poles, resulting in great manufacturing simplification. The performance of the new structure is compared to a MLS with ideal helical-shape poles using 3D Finite Element Analysis. Surface mounted and flux concentration designs using the new principle are both introduced.