Noncontact Spinning Mechanism Using Rotary Permanent Magnets

Abstract

This paper proposes a noncontact spinning mechanism that spins a levitated object (in this case, an iron ball) using four rotary permanent disk magnets. When the object was stably levitated in the vertical direction by a magnetic suspension system, the disk magnets spun the suspended object in the horizontal direction by means of the remanent magnetization on the surface of the suspended object. In this mechanism, the disk magnets are arranged around the levitated object, and the magnetic poles are arranged in a parallel configuration. In this paper, the noncontact spinning principle of the noncontact spinning mechanism is discussed. Second, a prototype and a control system of the spinning system are introduced. Third, the rotational torque of the iron ball is calculated using a mathematical model and IEM (integral element method) analysis. Finally, the spinning experiments of the iron ball's velocity step response to the disk magnets and the relationship between the input and output velocities are examined, and the results are shown and discussed. All results indicate that a suspended object can be spun using this noncontact spinning mechanism.