PhD student: M. Mihalachi
(Supervisor: P. Mutschler)
State: In progress
Linear direct drives of the long- stator type have lightweight movers (moving magnets) and are capable of high accelerations and long traveling distances. They show excellent features for applications in advanced material processing system. Classical methods for position acquisition (inductive or optical devices) need contact -less transmission of auxiliary energy and / or information between the stationary controller and the mover. Using such a transmission, the advantage of a passive mover is lost and additional costs due to the contact- less energy and information transmission are introduced.
Therefore, methods for position acquisition with purely passive movers are to be explored and tested at an experimental set- up of linear drives.
Different principles for sensors (optical, laser based, inductive, capacitive etc ) have to be investigated with respect to their applicability with passive movers and the best suited method should be tested at an experimental set- up.
One of many different approaches may be to attach the measuring scale at the (passive) mover and to locate several read- heads (optical, inductive..) along the track. The position of the read -heads has to be such that at all time the scale is “seen” by at least one read -head. A rather sophisticated sensor- preprocessing electronic may be necessary to extract he mover's position from the numerous sin/cod -signals of all the read heads.
