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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.
"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.