Gsi Group Corporation

Faro Technologies, Inc.

Thorlabs Measurement Systems Inc.

Kurt Sidor

Bradley L Hunter

Carl Brian Candiloro

Mark S Longmuir

Adam I Pinard

Keith M Hinrichs

Kristopher Pruyn

An actuator may include a stator, a pole; a bobbin; and windings provided around an exterior surface of the bobbin. The stator may include a stator body; and a plurality of magnets circumferentially arranged around an inner surface of the stator body. The stator, the pole, and the bobbin may be coaxial. An outer diameter of the pole may be smaller than an inner diameter of the bobbin such that the bobbin is movable in an axial direction over an exterior surface of the pole. An outer diameter of the bobbin may be smaller than an inner diameter of the stator such that the bobbin is movable in an axial direction inside the plurality of magnets circumferentially arranged around the inner surface of the stator body.

Voice coil motor operated linear actuator

An actuator utilizes a voice coil motor with one or more voice coil windings supported on a light weight moveable bobbin that connects at one end to move an object rapidly up to a small number of millimeters translationally along a system axis. The bobbin moves over a distal portion of a center pole of a stator, which supports the voice coil motor magnets. The pole, which acts as a flux path for the voice coil motor, also provides a thin film of air in a gap between the pole and the bobbin via an air path and corresponding holes at the distal end of the pole. The bobbin moves translationally relative to the pole on the thin film of air under the control of the voice coil motor.

A position transducer system is disclosed for a limited rotation motor that includes an illumination source that directs illumination toward an illumination reflector that rotates with a rotor of the limited rotation motor, and a plurality of detector areas adjacent the illumination source for receiving modulated reflected illumination from the illumination reflector.

Optical position transducer systems and methods employing reflected illumination for limited rotation motor systems

A rotary optical position encoder for detecting angular position includes a light source, a monolithic scale disk including an optical scale pattern, a monolithic reticle substrate including sets of reticle aperture patterns between the light source and the scale disk, detection and conversion circuitry, and digital processing circuitry. The light source, scale disk, reticle substrate, and detection and conversion circuitry form a plurality of optical sub-encoders at angular positions about the rotational axis, each sub-encoder having an optical path extending from the light source to the detection and conversion circuitry via a respective set of reticle aperture patterns and the optical scale pattern. The digital processing circuitry is operative to combine digital position output values of the sub-encoders to generate an encoder position output value. The optical sub-encoders can include incremental position encoders that provide high-resolution position indications with improved thermally stability due to the use of a shared reticle substrate. Additional optical sub-encoders provide zero-reference or 'index' indications as well as a coarse absolute position.

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Plaistow, NH, United States of America

Kurt Sidor