Abstract
There is a strong demand fur the contactless transportation device fur a hard disk and silicon wafer without contaminating and damaging them. To fulfill this requirements, A transportation device fur them has been proposed. But the device needs many of costly displacement sensors positioned along the transportation interval and possesses a very complicated controller and driving scheme. To overcome those kinds of drawback, in this paper, we present a very simple and cost-effective transportation device which only consists of a linear guide, very simple electrostatic suspension system and driving circuit of stepping motor. The principle of stable suspension by relay feedback control, derivation of lateral restoring force, the design of transportation system are described, fellowed by the experimental system. Experimental results show that a 3.5-inch hard disk has been transported with a speed of approximately 20mm/s while being suspended stably at a gap of 0.25mm.