Design and test of a linear micro-motion stage with adjustable stiffness and frequency

Various amplification mechanisms have been developed to extend the travel range of compliant mechanisms. For the serial design of these mechanisms and the neglection of the deflection of the link lever, the modeling errors are accumulated and contribute to a large deviation in the design performance. A stiffness-adjustable micro-motion is proposed in this work to offset the gaps between the design values and actual performance by utilizing the nonlinearity of corner-fillet leaf spring (CFLS). Simplified stiffness formulas of the right circular flexure hinge (RCFH) and fixed-guided CFLS are provided for easy design. The accurate model is built for the calculation of the amplification ratio by taking the deflection of the link lever and adjustment mechanism into account. The adjustment performance of the proposed mechanism is modeled by utilizing the nonlinear deflection. The design models are verified using finite element analysis (FEA) which presents a good agreement. Experimental investigations are carried out to illustrate the adjustment performance of the proposed micro-motion stage.