LDC1000 Linear Position Sensing

Hello George,

do you need the target design, or the coil design? The target design is very simple; I used a 24mm (x) * 15mm (y) * 1.5mm (z) piece of Aluminum.

Since I wrote the blog, I published an apps note on the subject which contains more information. Please look at  

Hi Ben:

I saw that app note and I was referring to coil in figure 5 but I guess I had misunderstood and called the rectangular shape the target while still using a circular coil.

What I'm thinking of doing is trying to use this as a positioning sensor for a gantry made of aluminum parts. Since everything is made of metal I thought you would need something like that in Figure 5 as your target. What would be the best way to do this?

Thanks,

George

Hi George,

there are two approaches for linear position sensing as summarized below. Which one you choose depends primarily on your mechanical geometry constraints.

In both cases, the target design is very simple (triangular or rectangular target).

We have scripts that generate the coils in the two drawings above in Altium (both circular and stretched coil designs). If these scripts are of any use to you, let me know and I can send them to you.

Having other metal close by is ok if it is in a fixed position, but it will decrease the dynamic range. If the interfering metal is moving, or if the dynamic range decrease is too much for your resolution requirements, you can add a ferrite shield:

https://e2e.ti.com/blogs_/b/analogwire/archive/2014/10/08/inductive-sensing-how-to-shield-from-metal-interference