Design Guidelines
Transport System Design
68 MagneMotion
Rockwell Automation Publication MMI-UM007F-EN-P - September 2020
Available Thrust
Several variables determine the thrust available from the QSHT motor to move a vehicle:
• Magnet array length (in cycles).
• Vehicle Gap (distance between the magnet array that is attached to the vehicle and the
motor).
• Friction or drag between the vehicle and the guideway.
• Motor Gap (physical distance between motors) and Downstream Gap (actual distance
between motor blocks in adjacent motors) (see Figure 3-8).
The effect of the first two variables, the number of cycles of magnet array and the Vehicle Gap
are shown best in Data for Transport System Design Calculations on page 317. Equations that
use all of these variables are provided in Determining Thrust Force on page 321.
At the nominal Vehicle Gap of 12 mm [0.47 in] (gap between the magnet array and the top of
the QuickStick HT motor) the QSHT motors provide approximately 182 N thrust per magnet
array cycle at 10.9 A stator current (see Table 3-3). The magnet arrays are available in various
lengths to provide the appropriate thrust for the application. Two arrays can be used in a dual
array vehicle (see Dual Array Vehicle on page 109), which effectively doubles the length of
the magnet array. By increasing the length of the magnet arrays the number of motors in the
system can be decreased, however the loss of thrust in the gaps between the motors must be
accounted for (see Figure 3-7).