Micro electric magnets

[zippertag]

I need to find a way to move something up and down 1cm at most and the weight is maybe 1 gram. A motor would be to heavy and complicated with gears. the idea is to send a current to the electro magnet and make it repel the target. so far i have not seen anything that i could buy off the self that will work. Anyone know of anything that will work I would appriciate.

Thanks
Zippertag

 

[dknguyen]

Could you use muscle wire?

 

[Sceadwian]

How much space do you have to work with? The 1cm distance and 1 gram of the load itself doesn't mean anything as far as your limitations on the size of the device that needs to move it. Also do you need it to hold that 1 gram load, and if so what force do you need to hold it with? Because that's more important than the load itself.

 

[audioguru]

Indoor electric model airplanes use a very small electromagnet to move the rudder, elevator and ailerons.

 

[Sceadwian]

I was thinking that too audioguru, but they charge an arm and a leg for those coils and they're easiy enough to home wind using 33-36 gauge magnet wire. Also I'm not so sure how much force they put out. The entire weight of such small RC crafts are generally only 10-30 grams so 1 gram of force for a control surface may be more than it can put out. You'd have to test it. The nice thing about using tiny coils is that they can be proportionately controlled if need be. Feedback is a problem but proportional current with no feedback is better then on/off movement.