Manufacturing error analysis of compliant 3-DOF microrobot

Abstract

In the fields of micro/nanopositioning application, error analysis is an effective way to enhance the precision of micromanipulators. Manufacturing imperfections, which are inevitable, are the most important factors influencing the accuracy. Therefore, various manufacturing imperfections were studied by taking a planar 3 degrees of freedom (3-DOF) flexure hinge based microrobot as a case. By formulating static stiffness of the robot, mapping between manufacturing imperfections and end-effector positioning accuracy was obtained. Using the theoretical calculation and finite element method (FEM), effects of various machining imperfection types on end-effector positioning accuracy were evaluated. The results showed that errors of the radium of the hinges and angular differences of the centerline of the hinges were dominant factors resulting in output errors. Conclusions drawn from the experiments can be used to instruct the design of compliant parallel mechanisms by distributing various manufacturing differences of configurable parameters to guarantee precision in the positioning of the end-effector within the required range; they may also be helpful while calibrating this kind of manipulator.