Abstract
This article describes a compact, low-cost, single-board FlexLab/LevLab electromechanical system for use in teaching modeling, dynamics, and control of mechatronic systems. The portable educational platform proposed in this article enables a flipped-lab approach where students can do experimental work outside a dedicated lab facility and so, achieve a better understanding through more extensive hands-on experiences. The system has actuators, sensors, and power electronics implemented on a 70 $\,\times \,$ 100 mm printed circuit board. Mechanical motion in up to three degrees of freedom (DoFs) is implemented using on-board spiral coils as Lorentz actuators to drive moving permanent magnets (PM) with Hall effect position sensing on each magnet. The maximum magnet motion range is 4 and 3 mm in the vertical direction for the FlexLab and LevLab, respectively, and the positioning noise of the Hall effect sensors with an oversampling filter is approximately 0.2 $\mu{\rm m}$ RMS. In the FlexLab configuration, up to three PM disk pairs can be mounted on a flexible cantilever beam in locations which interact with three spiral coils. This configuration allows modeling, measurement, and control of second-, fourth-, and sixth-order mass–spring system dynamics. In the LevLab configuration, the board can implement both single- and three-DoF magnetic suspension systems via Lorentz forces on either a spherical PM or three pairs of disk PMs on a triangular backbone.
Published Version
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