Design and analysis of a new high precision decoupled XY compact parallel micromanipulator

With the development of nanotechnology that contains automatic control, precision machinery and precise measurement, etc., micro/nano manipulation has become a new research direction in recent years. This paper presents the design and analysis procedures of a new high precision XY decoupled compact parallel micromanipulator (DCPM) for micro scale positioning applications. The DCPM is made up of the decoupler, two-stage amplifier and the piezoelectric translator (PZT) actuators, which utilizes the characteristics of flexure hinges. In this paper, firstly, a new two-stage bridge-principle amplifier is proposed by a serial connection of two fundamental bridge amplifiers in order to increase the ratio of amplification. It is pivotal for designing the micromanipulator. Then, the kinematic modeling of the micromanipulator is carried out by resorting to stiffness and compliance analysis via matrix method. Finally, the performance of the micromanipulator is validated by finite-element analysis (FEA) which is preliminary job for fabricating the prototype and designing the control system of the XY stage that is expected to be adopted into micro/nano manipulations.