Levitating ‘Carousel’ milking platform: conceptual approaches to its designing

Large dairy farms use mainly imported technological equipment in automated rotary milking parlors, which provide the maximum throughput capacity of 100 to 500 animals per hour. The most capital-intensive component of the rotary ‘Carousel’ milking parlor is a rotating platform carrying the main load (its own weight and the weight of the animals being moved). The nearly round-the-clock operation mode predetermines significant power consumption and wear of the drive, support, guide rollers and rails making it rather labor-intensive to replace these parts. Therefore, an urgent issue is the import substitution of equipment. In order to increase the operational reliability of the rotary ‘Carousel’ milking parlor, to reduce capital costs during installation, and current costs for maintenance and repair, the authors proposed to develop a resource-saving design of the rotary milking platform. The paper presents the technological design of levitating milking platform of the ‘Carousel’ type with the use of movers operating on permanent magnets (Halbach array) on the magnetic levitation principle (unsupported suspension), and the structural and logical model of a magnetic suspension of the milking platform. The advantages of such a system include the practical absence of friction force to rotate the load-carrying platform with animals, which will require significantly lower drive power. In addition, we obtain quiet movement, significantly lower operating costs associated with the need to replace the support rollers, lubricate bearings, and maintain two or three electric traction drives, etc. The innovative attractiveness of the development lies in the possibility of designing circular and linear magneto-planning electric transport in technological installations to move and manage animals in milking parlors, and move robotic feed cars in feed shops, storage facilities, and around the farm.

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