Automatic alignment of multiple magnets into Halbach cylinders

Abstract Halbach cylinders have found various applications for their ability to produce strong and homogenous magnetostatic fields. Contrary to their conventional manual fabrication, we introduce a novel approach to automatically align multiple permanent magnets into a Halbach cylinder. The approach uses the magnetic field distribution from a diametrically magnetized cylindrical magnet to simultaneously align multiple magnets. The extent to which the automatic assembly can approximate a Halbach cylinder was analyzed using 3D Finite Element Modeling. Prototypes were built that demonstrated automatic alignment of eight magnets into Halbach cylinders. Automatic alignment eliminates the complexity of manually aligning Halbach cylinders.