Advantages include high-speed, long-life operation in a compact form factor.

Motor/generators based on conical magnetic bearings have been invented as an improved alternative to prior such machines based, variously, on radial and/or axial magnetic bearings. Both the present and prior machines are members of the class of so-called “bearingless” or “self bearing” (in the sense of not containing mechanical bearings) rotary machines. Each motor/generator provides both a torque and force allowing it to either function as a motor and magnetic bearing or a generator and magnetic bearing concurrently. Because they are not subject to mechanical bearing wear, these machines have potentially long operational lives and can function without lubrication and over wide ranges of speed and temperature that include conditions under which lubricants would become depleted, degraded, or ineffective and mechanical bearings would fail.