A Novel Seesaw Swivel Actuator Design and Fabrication

Many small form factor optical pickup heads based on the swing arm design utilize piezoelectricity or slim plate of metal to perform focusing action. The seesaw type actuator is a new driving mechanism used for swiveling the entire optical pickup heads devices. The configuration of the seesaw swivel actuator has unique features including a rotary actuator for coarse and fine tracking and a seesaw arm for swiveling along a pivot instead of a hinge to permit a tilt focus movement. In this paper, a biaxial voice coil motor (VCM) combining the swing type tracking VCM and seesaw type focusing VCM in the rear of the swing arm is proposed. This seesaw swing arm actuator is fabricated and evaluated in dynamic experiments. The performance of the biaxial VCM is verified through simulation by finite-element methods, and the effectiveness is confirmed by experimental procedures and parametric design optimization.