The possibility of noncontact excitation of vibrations in a shaft was investigated in order to enable online structural health monitoring of a shaft during its rotating condition without stop operation. The proposed noncontact exciter was devised to exclusively generate one of two shaft vibration modes, so called longitudinal and flexural. Using the prototypes and a lot of experiments on them, it was proven that bias magnetic field, exciting voltage, center frequency, and geometry of yokes have crucial impacts on its output characteristics.