Design and Analysis of a New Flexure-based XY Micropositioning Stage with Decoupled Motion Characteristic

In this paper, a new two translational degrees of freedom (DOFs) flexure-based micromotion stage (FMMS) is presented. Two flexure-beam joints are used to design the stage for large motion range and meanwhile the symmetric layout of four kinematic chains restricts its parasitic motion in the XY plane. A detailed analytical model is established to evaluate the parasitic motion and dynamic property of the stage. Finite element simulations are carried out to inspect the performance and verify the theoretical model. Finally, the prototype is fabricated for performance tests. Linear and circular trajectory tests indicate that the proposed stage has a large workspace of about +/- 300 x +/- 300 mu m(2) with the maximum relative coupling error of 0.6%, and good positioning and tracking performances. In addition, the results from dynamic tests show that the natural frequencies for two translational vibrations are 209.7 Hz and 212.4 Hz, respectively.