README.md

Loadcells

Measuring displacement of a point or surface, rather than measuring the deformation of a flexure, offers many possibilities for compact, low-cost load cells. This page gathers some resources on this topic and presents work towards a simple six degree-of-freedom (DOF) loadcell based on these ideas.

Capacitive

One way to determine the proximity of two surfaces is by measuring the capacitance between them. This page documents experiments with a 3 DOF Capacitive load cell using a single printed circuit board.

It is based on a discrete electrostatics solver (shown below), and also documented on the page above.

Magnetic

Another proximity measurement uses the magnetic field instead of the electric field. Integrated circuits are available with extremely sensitive magnetostrictive, magnetorestive, and hall effect sensors. Using differential pairs of these elements, very low-cost, non-contact rotary and linear encoders can be made. A great resource for designing such magnetic devices is the Honeywell Hall Effect Handbook.