The advent of neodymium iron boron rare‐earth permanent magnet material has afforded the opportunity to construct linear machines of high force to weight ratio. The paper describes the design and construction of an axial flux machine and rotating drum test rig. The machine occupies an arc of 45° on a drum 1.22 m in diameter. The excitation is provided by blocks of NdFeB material which are skewed in order to minimize the force variations due to slotting. The stator carries a three‐phase short‐chorded double‐layer winding of four poles. The machine is supplied by a PWM inverter the fundamental component of which is phase locked to the rotor position so that a ‘‘dc brushless’’ drive system is produced. Electromagnetic forces including ripple forces are measured at supply frequencies up to 100 Hz. They are compared with finite‐element analysis which calculates the force variation over the time period. The paper then considers some of the causes of ripple torque. In particular, the force production due solely to the permanent magnet excitation is considered. This has two important components each acting along the line of motion of the machine, one is due to slotting and the other is due to the finite length of the primary. In the practical machine the excitation poles are skewed to minimize the slotting force and the effectiveness of this is confirmed by both results from the experiments and the finite‐element analysis. The end effect force is shown to have a space period of twice that of the excitation. The amplitude of this force and its period are again confirmed by practical results.