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Maglev Chip Finds Niche in Power Tools
andhar writes: "This story in the Financial Times just goes to show you that it's often not the sexiest application of a technology that makes the best business sense. 'Today, while "maglev" trains remain a technological curiosity, linear motors are being quietly exploited in the less obviously glamorous field of machine tools. One of the leaders in such applications is Forest-Liné, a French company that makes products vital to the competitiveness of much larger industrial businesses' My margaritas want a maglev blender!"
Small, quiet, discreet, and energy-efficient. Who says chicks can't get into technology?
Rock-solid slides for milling machines would rock the world. No, it ain't a sexy application, but it brings us a step closer to the ideal manufacturing scenario, where mechanical parts can actually be CNC-milled before they're even designed.
Corollary to Moore's Law: The IQ of new computer owners is declining.
Who says technology can't get into chicks?
This is news? My electric toothbrush has a linear motor..
e rs onal_care/oral_care.asp#technobrush
http://www.panasonic.com/consumer_electronics/p
I disagree. In China (actually Germany I think), one is being built now. Maybe still a curiousity, but only as much as anything else that is part of an evolving technology.
In my mind, the best application, and perhaps the most glamorous, is in energy storage using electromagnetic flywheels. A few years back, Scientific American published an article about electromagnetic flywheels being used as backup generators; get them spinning once and bury them underground, with almost no friction then spin for a LONG time. Power goes off, all you have to do is turn on the generator and you've got power to the length of time relative to the mass of the flywheel. For a while that was part of the big hype about hydrogen powered fuel cells in cars, though the 100,000RPM flywheel seems to seems to have scared away a lot of people.
The future isn't what it used to be.
> the germans who have a pump company called Schwing?
That's nothing - there's an Italian cooker manufacturere called Smeg. And to make things even better, their domain names is Smeg It.
Not everything that can be measured matters; Not everything that matters can be measured.
A well known fictional character prefered his dry martinis "Shaken not stirred". With a this form of agitation a linear motor has some applicability.
More than 20 years ago, I remember seeing at a computer show a daisywheel printer whose head was propelled by a linear motor (it was manufactured by a subsidiary of Exxon).
And in 1984, in Toronto, the Scarborough RT (Rapid Transit) line opened, which was the first full scale ICTS implementation. Since then, the small linear motor subway has found home in Vancouver and Detroit.
Today, while "maglev" trains remain a
technological curiosity, linear motors are being
quietly exploited in the less obviously
glamorous field of machine tools.
I consider machine tools that actually make things much more interesting then commuter trains hauling carloads of suits back and forth between their offices and their McMansions.
And 'MagLev' is not a synonym for 'linear motor'.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
It was about adopting linear motor technology
(orginally invented for trains I guess)
Linear motors were not invented for trains. They've been around a lot longer than maglev.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
"My margaritas want a maglev blender!"
There's a difference between levitation and propulsion.
From the Financial Times article: "Linear motors are "flattened out" versions of conventional rotary motors. As their name implies, they promote linear motion - of the kind required in many kinds of machine tools that use a large number of sliding and shuttling actions, fundamental to the job of cutting metal."
Linear motors are just rotary motors cut and laid out flat... or another way to explain them is a rotary motor of infinite radius.
"Maglev" is obviously short for magnetic levitation. Linear motors are common in maglevs simply because there is an air gap between the vehicle and the track. It would be very difficult to use conventional motors in such a system whithout driving wheels (or mechanical friction). However, other types of propulsion can also be used... such as jet engines, solid rocket boosters, etc. Although perhaps not practical for commercial trains, a maglev with rocket propulsion could be used for launching scram jets from the ground.
Linear motors can be used without magnetic levitation. It is completely feasible to use a linear motor on conventional wheeled "people movers." Although this application is rare since linear motors typical consume more energy than rotary motors.
Brother Typewriter had a product in the mid 80's called the Brother EM-1 electronic typewriter. The print carraige rolled back and fourth on a Linear Moter.
It had the advantage of having no belts or pulleys. Nothing to tighten or replace. It couldn't get out of alignment.
They abandoned it in later models for a wire pulley system. I guess the fact that it sounded like a BART train freaked people out.
-Cutecub
Linear motors have been around for quite a while in non "levitation" applications to:
BTW, why did the FT put a picture of a CCD imager chip on an article about linear motors?
Have been doing this for years.
Small, quiet, discreet, and energy-efficient.
That's what they all say to their boyfriends. "No hon, this little thing is just to keep me content until you arrive home; it can't satisfy me the way you do!"
But when they're in the ol' self-pleasure isle with the other gals, they're checking out the gas powered air/oil cooled 2.5hp variable speed "Super-O(TM)" with multiple attachments, and free oil changes and tune-ups for one year.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
They're not "new," we used Anorad linear motors back in college too many years ago to remember, back mapping the EMF using a sub-nanometer resolution laser interferometer to improve the velocity and position accuracy (they've been around since the '50s).
Currently I help design machines that use a mixture of linear motors and ball screws as appropriate. In applications with high linear speed, short/medium stroke, and no static hold requirement, linear motors are a good choice.
If you move slowly, that long chain of rare earth magnets isn't a good investment compared to a ball screw (but the ones that came out of a linear motor we broke that are on my refrigerator really impress people.)
If you need a long stroke, that chain of magnets gets very expensive ( though they're used for elevators sometimes.) On the other hand, ball screws can be limiting in applications requiring long length as the driven mass increases linearly with the length of the drive, not the case with a linear motor.
If your application requires extended static holds, then a ball screw is a lot easier to integrate.
For most machine tool applications they aren't really a good choice (since machine tools typically have feed rates and target accelerations well suited to ball screws) but a number of companies do build machines with linear motors for one or more axis, and they tend to dominante the "ultra-high speed machining market."
This is a decent comparison of the strengths and weaknesses of the two dominant linear motion technologies for the curious.
Now if you want a really new technology for linear motion appropriate to high accuracy machining, then what you really want is hydrostatic leadscrews and bearings.
I just wanna know who marked me Informative ... were they going by 'buzzwords,' or what ... ?
Corollary to Moore's Law: The IQ of new computer owners is declining.