Mechanical performances of a piezo-driven stage with 4-PP compliant guide mechanism

This paper presents a piezo-driven compliant stage implemented by the prismatic-prismatic (PP) compliant joint chains which accomplish a 4-PP compliant guide mechanism for two-DOF translations. The compliant joints consist of circular notch hinges. The 4-PP compliant guide mechanism is driven directly by two stack-type piezoelectric elements. Through design and analysis, the compliant guide mechanism is manufactured by wire electro-discharge machining, and then integrated with two stack-type piezoelectric elements for actuation and two capacitive sensors for ultra-precision displacement measurement. Finally experiments are carried out to demonstrate the performance of the stage with 4-PP compliant guide mechanism. The stage implemented by the compliant guide mechanism is applicable to an ultra-precision alignment system with high resolution.