Design of a flexure-based parallel XY micropositioning stage with millimeter workspace and high bandwidth

Abstract

This paper presents the design of a flexure-based parallel XY micropositioning stage with millimeter workspace and high bandwidth. The large range micropositioning requires the workspace of flexure-based stage to reach millimeter level. Meanwhile, the structural bandwidth of the flexure-based stage with large range is relatively low, which limits the scan rate and is required to be improved. A novel parallel mechanism is implemented to improve the structural bandwidth of the millimeter level flexure-based XY stage by removing redundant mass. The coupling between the working axes is reduced by a decoupler based on circular hinges. The mechanical performances of the designed XY stage are analyzed by theoretical models and verified by finite element analysis (FEA). Experimental results indicate that the designed XY micropositioning stage is capable of achieving millimeter workspace as well as a relatively high resonance frequency compared with other millimeter level flexure-based XY stages.