Internally-Balanced Magnetic Mechanisms Using Magnetic Spring for Producing Large Amplified Clamping Force

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel magnetic balancing mechanism using a magnetic spring to control clamping forces in magnetic devices, improving design simplicity and performance.

Contribution

It proposes a new magnetic spring-based balancing method for IB Magnets, addressing design complexity and trade-offs in existing mechanisms.

Findings

Prototype verified the effectiveness of the magnetic spring balancing.

Reduction rate comparable to conventional IB Magnets.

Demonstrated application in robotic clamping mechanism.

Abstract

To detach a permanent magnet with a controlled force much smaller than its original attractive force, the Internally-Balanced Magnetic Unit (IB Magnet) was invented and has been applied to magnetic devices such as wall-climbing robots, ceil-dangling drones, and modular swarm robots. In contrast to its drastic reduction rate on the control force, the IB Magnet has two major problems on its nonlinear spring which cancels out the internal force on the magnet: complicated design procedure and trade-off relationship between balancing precision and mechanism volume. This paper proposes a principle of a new balancing method for the IB Magnet which uses a like-pole pair of magnets as a magnetic spring, whose repulsive force ideally equals the attractive force of an unlike-pole pair exactly. To verify the proposed principle, the authors realized a prototype model of the IB Magnet using magnetic spring and verified through experiments its reduction rate is comparable to those of conventional IB Magnets. Moreover, the authors discussed and realized a robotic clamp as an application example containing proposed IB Magnets as its internal mechanism.