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Sunday, March 6, 2011

Linear motors

A linear motor is essentially an electric motor that has been "unrolled" so that, instead of producing a torque (rotation), it produces a straight-line force along its length by setting up a traveling electromagnetic field.

Linear motors are most commonly induction motors or stepper motors. You can find a linear motor in a maglev (Transrapid) train, where the train "flies" over the ground, and in many roller-coasters where the rapid motion of the motorless railcar is controlled by the rail. On a smaller scale, at least one letter-size (8.5" x 11") computer graphics X-Y pen plotter made by Hewlett-Packard (in the late 1970s to mid 1980's) used two linear stepper motors to move the pen along the two orthogonal axes.



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