Permanent Magnet Biased Linear Magnetic Bearing for High-Precision Maglev Stage

초정밀 자기부상 스테이지의 위치제어를 위한 영구자석형 선형 자기베어링의 개발

The active magnetic bearing has many advantages - an active positioning, no contact and lubrication free motion - and is widely used in high precision motion stages. But, the conventional magnetic bearings composed of electromagnets only are power consuming due to their bias current and have the excessive heat generation, which can make the repeatability of the positioning system worse. To overcome this drawback, we developed a novel permanent magnet (PM) biased linear magnetic bearing for a high precision magnetically levitated stage. The permanent magnets provide a bias flux and generate a bias force, and the electromagnet increases or reduces a flux of the permanent magnets and gives a levitation force. This paper presents a theoretical magnetic circuit analysis, FEM analysis and experimental data from the 1-DOF tests, and compares the theoretical power consumption of the electromagnetic bearings and the PM biased linear magnetic bearings. The PM biased linear magnetic bearing presented in this paper gives better load capacity but lower power consumption than a conventional electromagnetic bearing and will be adopted in our 6-DOF high precision linear positioning maglev stage.