Design and fabrication of a novel compliant rotary nanopositioning stage

This paper presents the design, fabrication, and testing of a compliant rotary nanopositioning stage for precision engineering applications. The major advantage of the rotary stage lies in that it possesses a large rotational range and a compact size simultaneously. A new idea of compound radial flexure is proposed to enable this merit. A novel rotary stage is designed to provide a rotary angle over 10° while delivering a negligible magnitude of center shift. In the design procedure, analytical models are established for the performance evaluation of the stage, which are validated by finite element analysis (FEA). A prototype stage of 10-cm diameter is fabricated by wire-electrical discharge machining (EDM) process for experimental tests. The stage is driven by a voice coil motor and its output motion is measured by laser displacement sensors. Both FEA and experimental results confirm the large rotational range and low level of center shift of the rotary nanopositioning system. The proposed idea can be extended to the design of other precision positioning systems with rotary motion.