The Effect of Rotor Plates on Capacitive Measurement in Capacitive Encoders

The moving plates of the capacitive encoders are called rotors and the fixed plates are called stators. In this study, the effects of the rotor plates on capacitive measurement for capacitive encoders are analyzed. Encoders are used in angular position measurement. They can be preferred especially in most applications where rotational motion occurs in the robotic application areas. The application areas of the encoders can be further extended with the capacitive encoder technology. The capacitive encoder technology is based on measuring the capacitances between the encoder plates. As the capacitances vary depending on the overlapping areas of the encoder plates, the shapes and the patterns of the encoder plates directly affect the capacitive measurement. Therefore, the capacitive encoder plate selections must be made correctly. There are very few studies on the selection of the capacitive encoder plates. It is seen that the current studies generally continue on a similar type rotor patterns. Various rotor plates are proposed in this study for the capacitive encoder that we are in the development process. After the rotor patterns are expressed mathematically and the capacitive encoders using rotors with these patterns are compared. The comparison process was made by calculating the equivalent capacitance between the proposed capacitive encoder plates. The effects of rotors with different materials and patterns on the capacitive measurement were investigated. Thus, a contribution was made to the effective development of similar capacitive sensors.