Electromagnetic Floater

Step 3 Install the Magnets and Sensor

This step is pretty straight forward, first solder the electromagnets to 4 of the wires. As you attach the parts be sure to use a continuity tester to find and label the corresponding wires on the other end. At this point it is not too important which way the electromagnet coils around the magnet, it can be adjusted later. But be sure to connect both electromagnets the same way.

When you put the electromagnets in the box when finished, put the permanent magnets inside the coil.

Next cut a piece of Plexiglas to fit inside the bottom of the ring box but so the bottom lip holds it up. The next step is to attach the IR emitters and sensor to the Plexiglas as seen in the pictures below using hot glue then finish attaching and labeling the wires.

Comments

[AdielFernandez]

This is a great project! I'm hoping to recreate this with a more powerful setup since I'm hoping to levitate a slightly heavier object. However, in looking at a bunch of EM levitators, I see people either use a hall effect sensor or an optical setup like your to sense position of the object. This one seems much simpler than having to measure the magnetic field with the hall sensor, are there any drawbacks from it? What are the benefits of using the hall sensor instead?

[penghars]

How about if you changed the microcontroller and LED and thar stuff with a potensiometer.... Could it still work??

[h2osteam]

you can try to use negative feedback opamp and some analog circuit design to achieve the same thing. i believed.

[bears0]

no it needs to compensate for height. if the object being levitated is too high it turns off the magnet and vice versa. with a potentiometer it wont be able to automatically adjust. also it would be impossible for someone to to control it because they couldn't react to the changes fast enough.