Sticky point again

[CLaNZeR]

Hi Kent

All my designs I have tried so far do not use any electrical parts, The muscle wire was just one of those fleeting thoughts!

At the moment I am trying different methods from mechanical cams to shielding and have been following the Steorns thread and will be trying a few ideas of the back of it.

Wil post some pictures when I get there!

Regards

Sean.

Clanzer, you may want to consider non electrical methods of controlling the magnetic fields.


Steorn's patent for a LEMA is actually pretty easy to build... now it doesn't really turn off the magnet as the patent might imply, but it effectively allows you to shift a magnet some distance with little force required.. you can use this to pull a magnet far enough out of range that it will glide past the sticky point.

I have some design ideas using the LEMA, on the new steorn thread the thevorlon started.

[Kent767]

great! definitely let me know how it goes, I'm wanting to try some ideas myself, but I don't have any parts yet.

I have some simple designs listed on the steorn replication thread you may want to take a look at, they are drawn horribly, but many of them are self evident.

If you have anything to offer regarding those i'd be interested in hearing as well..

There's a guy over there who says he's built a LEMA and it appears to function as designed with little force required..  the biggest issue I see though, is that even when the actuator is in the 'off' position, you're still going to have a magnet exposed below... maybe the solution resides in a very 'tall' LEMA with the shield covering 4 or 5 magnets, with 1 exposed above, or below, this allows the movement of the magnet a greater distance with little force.

[Speedy23]

Quote" the biggest issue I see though, is that even when the actuator is in the 'off' position, you're still going to have a magnet exposed below... " .....not if you use an extended shield/magnet configuration  and separate the 2 magnetic circuits using mu-metal or similar...

[Kent767]

if your implying using the shielding between the rotor and the LEMA, then you'd still have magnetic attraction between the exposed magnet below the rotor and the shielding, which would add drag.. albeit less than the attraction to the next lema actuator 90 degrees down the rotation..


THat was basically the point i was trying to make, however Idon't know if shielding the rotor on the bottom would even be nessesary.