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I want to pull some weight horizontally and for that i have settled for a linear actuator.

enter image description here

The actuator should pull some weight as it moves back and forth as the gif shows.

There are linear actuators i could find but they are too bulky with heavy motors and a lot of lubrication and the noise they make is not music to my ears.

I found electrical actuators to be a perfect fit but i do not know how they work for instance this actuator: R4 Series

do-the-thing-please
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Gandalf
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  • Look into ultrasonic motors. I don't know if there are any in trade for such "generic application" but they can be entirely silent, very compact and provide surprising amount of force for their size. – SF. Nov 28 '17 at 13:18

2 Answers2

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I found these images. Looks like they are driven by a motor.

Belt Driven Model

Belt Driven Model

Screw Driven Model

enter image description here

I suggest reviewing this document

706Astor
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2

For a minimum of moving parts, you can get linear stepper motors. With the right kind of controller (microstepping), the motion can be very smooth and quiet.

For example, I have in the past worked with linear actuators from Nippon Pulse, driven by a motor controller from Technosoft. Very precise and powerful, but also very expensive!

Dave Tweed
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  • Dave just out of interest, how much roughly would we be talking for the smallest linear servormotor from Nippon Pulse? – user88720 Jan 16 '16 at 19:38
  • @user88720: I didn't do the purchasing, so I'm not too sure. We used a couple of medium-sized dual-rail ones (500 mm travel) that I believe cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $2500 each. Way too costly for our end application, but we wanted the precision and the ability to experiment with different algorithms in our research prototypes. – Dave Tweed Jan 16 '16 at 19:55
  • Fair enough. When I noticed they had a precision down to the nanometer, I got the feeling they were going to be pretty expensive. Too expensive for my application as well :( – user88720 Jan 17 '16 at 00:59