A 3-DOF flexure-based fixture for passive assembly of optical switches

This paper presents the design of a planar compliant fixture for optical switch assembly to automatically accommodate the uncontrollable assembly errors. The fixture comprises a platform movable in x-y-thetas and three flexure-based supporting legs. Compliance performance is a mainly concern in the design. A closed-form formulation is developed to map the stiffness in the joints space into Cartesian space for generic 3-legged planar platforms. Based on the stiffness requirement, the structure and the configuration of the legs are synthesized and designed. Experimental results showed that the performance of the optical switch assembly system is improved significantly after adopting the fixture