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Positioning performance and

straightness error compensation of
the magnetic levitation stage
supported by the li...
Ouiserg Kim
IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics

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374 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 50, NO. 2, APRIL 2003

Positioning Performance and Straightness Error

Compensation of the Magnetic Levitation Stage
Supported by the Linear Magnetic Bearing
Oui-Serg Kim, Sang-Ho Lee, and Dong-Chul Han

Abstract—This paper reports high-precision motion control at

the target position and the offline compensation of the straight-
ness error occurring during the motion of the magnetically levi-
tated stage supported by the linear magnetic bearing. The linear
magnetic bearing is composed of electromagnets and sensors in
the same module to enable easy maintenance and to reduce the
machining error, and the conventional linear quadratic Gaussian
control is adopted for the motion control of the stage. The test re-
sults show that the stage can compensate the straightness error
precisely, so that it is expected that this stage can be applied to
high-precision linear motion applications.
Index Terms—Linear magnetic bearing, magnetically levitated
(maglev) stage, straightness error compensation.

I. INTRODUCTION
HE magnetic bearing with no mechanical contact is typ-
T ically adopted in high-precision rotating machinery, and
the linear magnetic bearing has recently been studied for high-
precision linear motion systems. The magnetic bearing can sup- Fig. 1. Schematics of the maglev system.
port and control both the translational and rotational motion of
the linear motion stage simultaneously so that the stage need
that the stage supported by magnetic bearings can compensate
no extra actuator and can be designed more simply. Williams et
the errors occurring during motion. The motion error of the stage
al. [1] and Trumper et al. [2] developed the magnetically levi-
moved by the linear motor includes straightness error and can be
tated (maglev) stage, which uses electromagnets to control the
reduced by the reference adjustment commands using a mirror
motion of five degrees of freedom. They adopted the capaci-
image of the error profile. For the motion control of the maglev
tive sensor for displacement feedback. Tieste et al. [3] suggest
stage, the conventional linear quadratic Gaussian (LQG) con-
the linear maglev guide for machine tools with high speed and
trol is adopted and the performance and error compensation are
high stiffness. Using three electromagnetic units for suspension
evaluated.
and linear propulsion, Auer et al. [4] performed six-degree-of-
freedom motions. Kim et al. [5] have developed an – stage
II. MAGLEV STAGE DESIGN
for the sensor probe station using magnetic bearings combined
with linear ball bearings. Kim et al. [6] have created a planar A. Maglev Stage
stage with a single maglev moving part. These papers report new Fig. 1 shows the schematics of the maglev system composed
configurations for the system and the improvement of the posi- of six guideways, four bearing modules, a maglev stage, a linear
tioning resolution with a high-resolution sensor system. In this motor, a linear scale, and a sensor amplifier. The guideways are
paper, as an advantage of the magnetic bearing, it will be shown made of laminated silicon steel to reduce the energy loss due
to the eddy current which tends to oppose the change in the
Manuscript received July 5, 2001; revised April 19, 2002. Abstract published field inducing it [7]. Table I summarizes the specifications of
on the Internet February 4, 2003. This work was based upon BK21 and national the maglev stage system.
research projects supported by the Institute of Advanced Machinery and Design,
Seoul National University.
O.-S. Kim is with Samsung Electro-Mechanics, Suwon 442-803, Korea B. Magnetic Bearing Module
(e-mail: [email protected]).
S.-H. Lee is with Samsung Electronics, Kiheung 449-900, Korea (e-mail: The attractive type of the magnetic suspension system is
[email protected]). inherently unstable so that it needs a feedback compensator
D.-C. Han is with the School of Mechanical and Aerospace En- for stabilization. A capacitive sensor system is used as a
gineering, Seoul National University, Seoul 151-742, Korea (e-mail:
[email protected]) displacement feedback device. The sensor amplifier is designed
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TIE.2003.809415 on the printed circuit board and mounted on the maglev stage.
0278-0046/03$17.00 © 2003 IEEE
KIM et al.: POSITIONING PERFORMANCE AND STRAIGHTNESS ERROR COMPENSATION OF THE MAGNETIC LEVITATION STAGE 375

TABLE I
SPECIFICATIONS OF THE MAGLEV STAGE SYSTEM

Fig. 3. Convention coordinates of the maglev stage.

where permeability of air is , nominal air gap

is 0.2 mm and pole face area of each magnetic bearing is
, and coil turns are 330.
Therefore, the total magnetic force acting on the maglev
stage can be expressed as
(4)
where

Fig. 2. Magnetic bearing module.

(5)
Mounting the amplifier on the stage shortens the wiring from As a result, the equation of motion for the maglev stage shown
sensor to amplifier, so the noise induced along the wires can in Fig. 3 is given by
be reduced. A removable type of magnetic bearing module
as shown in Fig. 2, which is composed of three electromag-
netic actuators and three capacitive sensors, is designed and
developed for convenience in maintenance. Both the actuator
and the sensor are laid on the same surface of the module (6)
and are molded with epoxy. In order to reduce the machining
error, all surfaces of the magnetic bearing module are ground
concurrently.

III. FIVE-DEGREES-OF-FREEDOM MOTION CONTROL

A. Equation of Motion (7)
In Fig. 3, each magnetic bearing channel consists of a pair of
opposite electromagnets. In this case, one magnet is driven with
the sum of bias current and control current, and the other magnet
Each of the modules is located symmetrically, so the mass-in-
with the difference. Thus, if the magnetization of the iron is
ertia matrix can be assumed to be diagonal. , , and are
neglected, we obtain a linearized resultant magnetic force
the coordinates of each magnetic force acting on the stage,
given by (1), which combines a displacement force with position
is a base coordinate for translational and angular motion, and
stiffness and a current force with current stiffness [8]
is a linear transformation matrix from to the actuator
coordinates.
(1)
B. State-Space Representation
(2)
Although the maglev stage has six degrees of freedom, only
five coordinates are required to control five
(3)
degrees of freedom at the target position moved by the linear
376 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 50, NO. 2, APRIL 2003

Fig. 4. LQG servo controller structure.

motor. There are six sensor channels in the fabricated system

for symmetry, but only five channels are needed to measure the
five-degrees-of-freedom motions. Thus, we use two channels
for and motions in the plane and three channels for ,
and motions in the plane. Therefore, the whole system
can be described as a five-input/six-output system. The state-
space representation obtained from the equation of motion can
be described as follows:

(8)
where

Fig. 5. Time response of the LQG controller.

(9)

C. LQG Control
The LQG control problem is to find the optimal control
which minimizes

(10) Fig. 6. 5-m step response of the LQG control system.

where is the expectation operator and and are appropri- The large relative weight on the state variable is used to re-
ately chosen constant weighting matrices. The complete struc- duce the state variable quickly. Therefore, it can control fast
ture of the control system is shown in Fig. 4. positioning and allow large bearing stiffness [8] at the expense
The gain matrix that minimizes the performance index de- of high control energy. We have selected the gains of the LQG
pends on the arbitrary values of weighting factor and . controller observing the time response test. First, the weighting
We have chosen that the norm of is larger than that of factor is fixed to 1 and the value of varies from 1 to 200 as
as follows: shown in Fig. 5. The whole performance in time domain indi-
cates a large overshoot and long settling time when 1 is selected
as an initial value of . The performance was changed drasti-
cally with respect to the next small variation of . This means
that the larger the difference between and is, the faster the
(11) time response of the system becomes.
KIM et al.: POSITIONING PERFORMANCE AND STRAIGHTNESS ERROR COMPENSATION OF THE MAGNETIC LEVITATION STAGE 377

TABLE II
SYSTEM ACCURACY AND REPEATABILITY OF THE MAGLEV SYSTEM

(a) (b)
Fig. 7. (a) Vertical straightness error. (b) Horizontal straightness error.

The settling time and the rising time are getting shorter grad-
ually when the value of varies from 50 to 200. The settling
time can be shorter with the larger value of , but the overshoot
and the rising time are little affected and the system could even
be unstable. Fig. 6 shows the experiment and the simulation for
a 5- m step response of the system using the LQG controller
with 1-kg load on the stage.

IV. TEST RESULTS

Fig. 8. Configuration of the tilted target mirror.
Reference [9] is adopted to evaluate system accuracy and
system repeatability. Each test is measured and repeated seven
times bidirectionally with each constant step for high reliability.

A. Positioning Performances
The system accuracy and system repeatability are measured
by the Renishaw (10-nm- resolution) laser interferometer and
the Moller-Weder ELCOMAT 2000 (0.01-arc-second resolu-
tion) autocollimator. The five-degrees-of-freedom motions are
measured while the linear motor is turned on to restrain the
directional motion. The maglev stage moves to 0.5 m in the ,
directions with each 0.1- m step bidirectionally and the whole
tests are repeated seven times. During the rotational motion test,
the maglev stage rotates 5 arc-seconds with an increment of 1
arc-second bidirectionally and the tests are also repeated seven
times. The system accuracy and repeatability are summarized in
Table II. Fig. 9. Vertical straightness error compensation.
Next, the straightness is evaluated by the rotational angle of
the stage moved by the linear motor with a stroke of 100 mm. can maintain its characteristics below 1 m during the whole
The autocollimator measures the angle of the stage that moves 100–mm stroke motion. It is estimated that the stage can have
100 mm with an increment of 20 mm bidirectionally. We di- a nanometer level of straightness error if the stroke is below
vided the pitching errors and the yawing errors occurring in the 10 mm. The results reveal that the stage can track the center of
, directions, respectively, in Fig. 7 and evaluated the straight- the guideways very precisely following the signal of the built-in
ness by the end-point-fitting method. Fig. 7 shows that the stage differential sensors.
378 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 50, NO. 2, APRIL 2003

TABLE III
STRAIGHTNESS ERROR COMPENSATION

B. Straightness Error Compensation [3] K. D. Tieste and K. Popp, “A linear maglev guide for machine tools,” in
Proc. MAG’97 Industrial Conf. and Exhibition on Magnetic Bearings,
From the results of the straightness error shown in Fig. 7, the Aug. 1997, pp. 37–46.
maglev stage can hold a very stable motion when it moves. It [4] F. Auer and H. F. van Beek, “Practical application of a magnetic bearing
and linear propulsion unit for six degrees of freedom positioning,” in
will be shown that the straightness errors of the stage can be
Proc. 4th Int. Symp. Magnetic Bearings, 1994, pp. 183–188.
compensated by offline using the error profiles when the errors [5] O. S. Kim, H. J. Ahn, Y. Joung, I. B. Chang, and D. C. Han, “Micropo-
occur during the each step motion. To show the measuring error sitioning of a linear motion table with magnetic bearing suspension,” in
Proc. ASPE 12th Annu. Meeting, Oct. 1997, pp. 406–409.
apparently, the target mirror is tilted in the laser interferometer
[6] W. J. Kim and D. L. Trumper, “High-precision magnetic levitation stage
system shown in Fig. 8. for photolithography,” Precis. Eng., vol. 22, no. 2, pp. 66–77, Apr. 1998.
Fig. 9 shows the offline compensation of the straightness error [7] J. D. Krauss, Electromagnetics, 4th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill,
occurred in the direction on line D while the stage moves 5 m 1991, pp. 436–437.
[8] G. Schweitzer, H. Bleuler, and A. Traxler, Active Magnetic Bear-
with step of 1 m in the direction bidirectionally. ings. Zurich, Switzerland: VDF, 1994, pp. 66–67.
The error is the pitching error (vertical straightness error) [9] Test Code for Machine Tools-Part 2: Determination of Accuracy and
with the axis of rotation, and the error profile on line D is mea- Repeatability of Positioning Numerically Controlled Axes, ISO 230-2,
1997.
sured by a laser interferometer. The reference adjustment profile
on line E is created and commanded to the stage to compensate
for the errors on line D. The offline compensation strategy is just
to use the inversed position command at each step on line E as
Oui-Serg Kim was born in Seoul, Korea, in 1967. He
a mirror image of line D and is simple and easy to implement. received the B.S. and M.S. degrees from the Depart-
As a result, the straightness error compensation is completed ment of Precision Mechanical Engineering, Hanyang
on line F and the results are summarized in Table III. The result University, Seoul, Korea, in 1990 and 1993, respec-
tively, and the Ph.D. degree from the School of Me-
shows that the maglev stage can compensate the straightness er- chanical and Aerospace Engineering, Seoul National
rors precisely with offline method. University, Seoul, Korea, in 2000.
Currently he is a Senior Researcher with Samsung
Electro-Mechanics, Suwon, Korea. His research in-
V. CONCLUSION terests are analysis, design, and control of electro-
The maglev stage has been implemented with five-degrees- mechanical systems.
of-freedom motions using capacitive sensors for precision po-
sitioning. The stage has four magnetic bearing modules as a
suspension device and fine positioner. The magnetic bearing
module with built-in capacitive sensors has been developed. It Sang-Ho Lee received the B.S. degree from the De-
has the advantages of easy maintenance and reduced machining partment of Mechanical Engineering, Seoul National
University, Seoul, Korea, and the Ph.D. degree from
error. The six channels of the differential sensor amplifier have Seoul National University in 1994 and 2001, respec-
been implemented on the printed circuit board and mounted on tively.
the maglev stage to reduce the noise induced along the wires. Currently he is a Senior Researcher with Samsung
Electronics, Kiheung, Korea. His current research
This stage has a very simple design and instrumentation to move interests are analysis and control of semiconductor
with little traveling without a complicated laser interferometer equipment, in particular, scanners for lithography.
feedback system.
The experimental achievements include the position accuracy
of less than 0.1 m both in the and directions and less
than 0.5 arc-seconds in the whole rotational motion. The ma-
glev stage performs straightness error compensation success- Dong-Chul Han received the B.S. degree from
fully with offline method using the mirror image of the mea- the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Seoul
sured error profile. It is expected that this stage can be applied National University, Seoul, Korea, in 1969, and
the Dipl.-Ing. and Dr.-Ing. degrees from the De-
to precision positioning devices and supporting systems in the partment of Mechanical Engineering, University
linear motion system. of Karlsruhe,Karlsruhe, Germany, in 1975 and
1979, respectively. He also received the Habilitation
from the Department of Mechanical Engineering,
REFERENCES University of Karlsruhe.
[1] M. E. Williams, D. L. Trumper, and R. Hocken, “Magnetic bearing stage Currently, he is a Professor in the School of Me-
for photolithography,” Ann. CIRP, vol. 42/1, pp. 607–610, 1993. chanical and Aerospace Engineering, Seoul National
[2] D. L. Trumper and M. A. Queen, “Precision magnetic suspension linear University. His current research interests are machine element design and bio-
bearing,” presented at the NASA Int. Symp. Magnetic Suspension Tech- MEMS.
nology, NASA Langley Res. Ctr., VA, Aug. 19–23, 1991. Prof. Han is the President of the Korea Society of Automotive Engineering.