Add Linear Motion to Your Project with This Linear PCB Motor

Electric motors are a beautiful thing, and their ability to efficiently transform electric current into rotational motion quite literally makes our modern world go ‘round. The obvious problem, however, is that not all mechanisms require rotary movement. When you want linear motion, the traditional solution is to use gears to translate that rotation into a line, or to use a solenoid. Thanks to this linear PCB motor, you can now add another solution to your toolkit.

This open source project was created by Carl Bugej as an inexpensive means of adding linear motion to your mechanisms. It relies on the same electromagnetism that makes standard electric motors work. On a regular electric motor, electromagnet windings are placed radially around a magnetic rotor (or vice-versa). When those windings have current applied in sequence, the rotor spins. This linear PCB motor uses the same principle, just with the windings arranged in a line on a plane.

In this case, that plane is the surface of a simple PCB, and the windings are simply traces printed on the board. Virtually any microcontroller, or even discrete components, can be used to provide power to each winding in sequence. As the windings are activated, a magnet inside of a 3D-printed slider is pulled across the PCB, providing low-torque linear motion. If you want an affordable way to add linear motion to your project, this is a clever solution that should be easy to implement.