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How would one design an actuator with the following requirements:

The actuator is completely isolated with no electrical contacts. Imagine a rotor encapsulated in sealed plastic cylinder. The rotor is rotated by say 45 degrees to lock / unlock a system.

The rotor is designed so that it cannot be rotated unless inductively energized thus becoming magnetic. The rotor has to be non-ferrous and non-magnetic.

As an example only I picture an impeller from a water pump but with the magnetic charge of the rotor being from induced current instead of a permanent magnet.

For the use case, the stator is removable. Once removed the encapsulated rotor must not be able to be rotated by a permanent magnet
{without adding some sort of braking or locking mechanism.}

Clarification: I can't explain the application explicitly. The rotor will acting as a lock mechanism. Unpowered it would be locked from sliding up. Once powered to rotate out of the locked position let's say 45 degrees, it would be free to slide up.

Induction Solenoid:

Alternatively, a similar concept but instead an induction solenoid. One that could not be actuated by a permanent magnet. Unpowered it's held in home position with a spring and only moves when powered.

Non-ferrous? Material is unimportant as long as it can't be actuated externally with a magnet.

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    \$\begingroup\$ Spinning a correctly-shaped permanent magnet around your rotor will be indistinguishable from using a stator to establish a spinning magnetic field. \$\endgroup\$
    – TimWescott
    Commented Nov 8, 2019 at 23:36
  • \$\begingroup\$ Just make a squirrel-cage induction machine, without the iron rotor. It'll be horribly inefficient, though. \$\endgroup\$
    – TimWescott
    Commented Nov 8, 2019 at 23:37
  • \$\begingroup\$ -TimWescott Good point about the rotating magnet. Efficiency is not really important as it only needs a small rotation. As far as a rotating magnet, as long as it could not be done by hand using a readily available magnet like a ring magnet. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Nov 8, 2019 at 23:51
  • \$\begingroup\$ Using an exterior permanent magnet could be prevented by filling the space that would be occupied by the stator with a ferrous mass. \$\endgroup\$
    – user80875
    Commented Nov 9, 2019 at 0:15
  • \$\begingroup\$ This is pretty vague. What do you mean by "small rotation"? What does "readily available" mean to you? At the corner grocery? From Amazon? \$\endgroup\$ Commented Nov 9, 2019 at 0:39

3 Answers 3

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Another approach: Let it be ferrous and magnetic. You have plenty of options to prevent moving it with external magnetic fields.

  1. Have a gapless high permeability shield around the moving magnetic parts. It redirects external fields to pass the movable magnetic parts including static magnetic fields

  2. Use an AC motor which should rotate numerous (for ex. 200) revolutions before the opening happens. Wireless powering electronics can have also code checking (the lock sends a coded question and expects the right coded answer to make recorded signals useless). Have a non-magnetic gearbox which generates the final movement. It gives an effective brake for free.

  3. Have a mechanism which needs 2 simultaneous opposite movements to open, but an external field tries to move them to the same direction.

  4. Have a sensor which detects external fields and starts either active countermeasures or locks the system mechanically.

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The rotor has to be non-ferrous and non-magnetic.

...

I picture an impeller from a water pump but with the magnetic charge of the rotor being from induced current instead of a permanent magnet

The two statements above are a oxymoron; you cannot have induced current significant enough to affect movement in something non-ferrous.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Why not? Wireless chargers induce current. I'm not to concerned about efficiency and the movement required is minimal \$\endgroup\$ Commented Nov 12, 2019 at 15:17
  • \$\begingroup\$ It's not an oxymoron. Drop a rare earth magnet down a copper/aluminum tube. It'll fall down very slowly - due to an induced current in something non-ferrous. Example gif: i.imgur.com/eL3Vg0E.gif \$\endgroup\$
    – jms
    Commented Dec 15, 2019 at 6:00
  • \$\begingroup\$ Eddy current breaks are also a thing. They can't stop completely but they can shed a ton of energy quickly. \$\endgroup\$
    – vini_i
    Commented Dec 22, 2020 at 12:48
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Here's an alternate approach:

Use an inductive charger circuit in the "key", but turn it on and off so as to encode a passcode (like RFID). The key powers the lock, and provides a passcode, when the lock is powered, and has received the right passcode, it uses the power to pull back a small solenoid or other actuator.

Make sure the actuator is magnetically shielded of course :)

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