A flexure-based 5-DOF positioning stage for R2R inkjet printer

Overlay alignment is a key technology in multi-layer Roll-to-Roll inkjet Printing. To eliminate or reduce the defects, an active compensation compliant mechanism is proposed to compensate the errors occurred during production. The mechanism consists of four parts which provide the printhead 5 DOFs to compensate errors actively. In this paper, the design of the whole device is presented. The kinematics analysis of each part will be introduced in detail. Analytical model for calculating the stiffness of each part is developed by using pseudo-rigid-body model methodology. Finite element simulations are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the design.