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US 11,460,530 B1Granted
Slide screw tuner with adjustable pitch
OwnerChristos Tsironisinventor
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A slide screw tuner control mechanism uses linear actuator movement with numerically controlled PITCH (number of threads per inch). The PITCH is adjustable using the concept of a differential screw, implemented by independent control of the rotation of the actuator built-in ACME screw, yielding a numerically controllable overall effective PITCH. Tuner calibration and tuning can use dynamically adjustable horizontal movement increments increasing tuning speed at low frequencies without loss of fine-tuning resolution at high frequencies.
Claims4
A slide screw impedance tuner having mechanically adjustable horizontal movement step resolution, comprising:
- a low loss slotted airline having a test port, an idle port, and a center conductor between the ports;
- a rotatable lead screw extending horizontally along a length of the slotted airline;
- at least one mobile carriage horizontally translatable on the lead screw along the slotted airline on a horizontal axis,
- said at least one mobile carriage comprising:
- a first stepper motor;
- a metallic tuning probe insertable into a slot of the airline along a vertical axis perpendicular to the horizontal axis between a withdrawal position Y=0 and a maximum penetration position Y=YMAX, a position of the metallic tuning probe between the withdraw al position and the maximum penetration position controllable by the first stepper motor;
- a motorized linear stepper actuator having a rotor threadingly engaged with the lead screw, the linear stepper actuator controllable to rotate the rotor relative to the lead screw to provide a per actuator-motor-step coarse displacement XC for controlling a horizontal position of the mobile carriage along the slotted airline on the horizontal axis;
- and
- a second stepper motor, controllable independently from the linear stepper actuator, to rotate the lead screw relative to the rotor of the linear stepper actuator to provide a per actuator-motor-step fine displacement XF for controlling a horizontal position of the mobile carriage along the slotted airline on the horizontal axis.
6 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.