Development of Bridge and Lever Type Compact Compliant Mechanism for Micro Positioning Systems

Abstract

Nowadays, for precision positioning applications (Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems, Nano/Micro positioning devices), compliant mechanisms are extensively used over traditional mechanisms. Compliant mechanisms are joint less mechanism having merits as no wear and friction, no backlash and no lubrication. In this paper, a newly developed flexure hinge based bridge and lever type compact compliant mechanism has been proposed for the precision linear displacement applications. This mechanism can be used in the portable cameras for image stabilization, lens shutters, alignment and levelling devices, etc. The key performance parameters for developing the compliant mechanism are the input displacement/force, output displacement and amplification ratio. For designing compact amplified compliant mechanism (CACM), Pseudo-Rigid-Body-Model (PRBM) method is used. The finite element analysis of developed micro-displacement amplifier compliant mechanisms carried out by using ANSYS workbench. The analyses and experimentation is performed for the input displacement, output displacement and amplification ratio of mechanism. An input force range considered for analysis is in between 1 N to 50 N. All the results from analytical, simulation and experimentation are compared. The error in output displacement is observed up to 6% and the geometric amplification ratio for the mechanism is observed up to 6.5.