ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 17 -- United States Patent no. 12,311,410, issued on May 27, was assigned to Syntegon Technology GmbH (Waiblingen, Germany).
"Planar drive apparatus and method for operating a planar drive apparatus" was invented by Sebastian Schwarz (Neusitz, Germany), Johannes Rauschnabel (Fichtenau, Germany) and Thomas Kosian (Insingen, Germany).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A planar drive apparatus includes at least one mover and a drive table. The mover has an outer shell, the drive table has a planar drive surface, and the mover can be electromagnetically coupled to the drive surface and can be moved in a floating state parallel to the drive surface. The drive table has a cleaning ...