A new planar 3-DOF parallel mechanism with continuous 360-degree rotational capability

This paper presents a novel three degrees of freedom (3-DOF) planar parallel mechanism with a 360-degree rotational capability, which can be used as a positioning device. A high rotational capability is necessary to reduce process time and to apply the mechanism to various fields such as micro-machining and printed circuit board (PCB) depaneling. The proposed mechanism has the advantage of a continuous rotational capability over existing planar parallel mechanisms with limited rotation. The position and velocity kinematics are derived, and the singularities are analyzed based on the Jacobian matrices. The workspace can be determined not to have a singularity inside, and the kinematic variables for enlarging the singularity-free workspace are determined. The application example on the PCB depaneling process is proposed for future work.