Study of magnetic levitation technique applied to steel plate production line

Adoption of magnetic levitation techniques for production lines of steel plates has many advantages such as simplification of machining processes and improvement in quality of products. However conventional levitation procedures have not solved the problem for thin steel plates of sideslipping caused by gravitational force. In this paper, the following idea is proposed in order to avoid sideslip: the gap length command between the steel plate and the electromagnet is corrected so as to levitate the plate horizontally. Various experiments are performed under the proposed control, in order to confirm the validity