Abstract
Series magnetic suspension is applied to force measurement. In a double series magnetic suspension system, two floators are suspended with a single electromagnet. When PID control is applied to the lower (second) floator and force acts on the lower floator, the upper (first) floator displaces whereas the lower floator is maintained at the original position. Therefore, the force can be estimated for the displacement of the upper floator. When the parameters are set appropriately, small force leads to large displacement so that the proposed measurement method is suitable for noncontact measurement of micro force. In this work, an apparatus for tri-axis force measurement was fabricated. Force measurements were carried out with the apparatus. The results show that three-dimensional forces were measured with a high resolution by the developed apparatus.
