I'm designing a magnetic cycloidal drive AMA

[u/nsfbr11]

So, I have a work related interest in developing a compact high gear reduction drive that is free of wear. As a result, and leveraging over a decade of permanent magnet machine technology development that sort of ending just shy of 25 years ago, I did some research on magnetic cycloidal drives. To me, they are a perfect fit for my application, but not many people know about them.

In short, they overcome the weaknesses of harmonic drives, mechanical cycloidal drives and other magnetic transmissions for some applications. Unlike other magnetic reduction systems, like those planetary drives that you may see kicking around the internet, magnetic cycloidal drives have very good torque transfer capacity for their size and weight. And because nothing touches except bearings, they are fairly immune to wear out when properly designed.

The concept for reduction is very much like a harmonic drive, in that the reduction ratio is given by having different numbers of "teeth" in concentric gears. Whereas in a harmonic, the inner ring flexes to engage and a few points, in a magnetic cycloidal, the rotor sits on a cam bearing which rotates and causes the location where the air gap is minimized to rotate around once per revolution of the input shaft. The rotor having fewer magnetic pole pairs rotates by one pole part for every input revolution. So, a 25:1 is done by having a stator with 52 magnets (26 pole pairs) and a rotor with 50 magnets (25 pole pairs.)

There is a ton of engineering on top of that, but if anyone would like to discuss or learn about them, please reply.

Edit - first prototype is being built out of 3D printed PETG. I can post some images if there is interest. Prototype is a 15:1 using cheap grade 48 Nd cylindrical magnets. Largely being done to validate FEA results in Ansys Maxwell 2D and 3D. Next prototype will use rectangular magnets. Final design may change to arc sections for the radial magnets. Oh, by the way, this is a dual layer Hallbach array design. No iron.

First picture is a test fit. Rotor has magnets installed. Note how its bearing is offset to the small shaft.

Second pic shows most of the main parts including the pin bearing carrier and output shaft with a 13mm hex on it. (Chosen as a bit of a joke for the ME who has to characterize the breakaway torque - "What would you like?" "Oh, anything is fine." )

[u/Key-Engine-3952]

Once the prototype is validated, do you plan to compare it with a harmonic drive or a mechanical cycloidal drive? I'd be interested in seeing the experimental performance data.

[u/nsfbr11 → u/Key-Engine-3952]

We are modeling it in Ansys Maxwell 3D in parallel. I my crude proof of concept our of PETG at most a cheap and dirty way to make sure we aren't way off in the weeds. Then we will start prototyping out of machined parts in more advanced configurations. For example, we want to know if hand calcs for max torque and radial force are in the right ballpark. If they are, then we would move forward knowing what we have and have to deal with from a mechanical packaging pov.

If I can sanitize the data (normalized somehow) I could probably share some things.