Design and Assessment of a Piezo-actuated 3-DOF Flexible Nanopositioner with Large Stroke

In order to solve the conflict between large stroke and high precision for micro positioning mechanisms, a novel 3-DOF flexible nanopositioner is proposed in this paper. The nanopositioner uses three pairs of modified differential lever displacement amplifiers (MDLDA) instead of the traditional lever amplifier to enhance the mechanism workspace. At the same time, the mechanism uses piezoelectric actuator that are characterized by large stroke, high resolution and easy to control as the driving component. Flexible amplifiers connected to the moving platform through the cylinder hinge with a special way, which makes the mechanism behave a compact structure and good mechanical properties. After a series of mechanism optimal designs, the performance of the designed nanopositioner is verified by using the Finite Element Analysis (FEA) method. The experimental results indicate that the mechanism displacement amplification ratio can reach up to 7.1, thus the maximum output displacement can achieve around 0.71 mm and the amplification ratio won't influenced by the input stress or input displacement variations. All the results consistently testify the proposed device possesses satisfactory performance for fulfilling the practical precision machining and manipulation tasks.