Fabrication of a piezoelectrically driven micropositioning 3-DOF stage with elastic body using a multi-material 3D printer

Purpose This paper aims to propose a method for manufacturing multi-material monolithic structures with flexible materials to construct the elastic body by using a dual-nozzle three-dimensional printer to develop a piezoelectric (PZT)-driven micropositioning stage with three degrees of freedom (3-DOF) and flexure hinges. Design/methodology/approach Polylactic acid (PLA) and nylon were used for the lever structure's frame and flexure hinge, respectively. Additionally, the stage consisted of three PZT actuators for fine movement in the nanometer scale in 3-DOF (x, y and theta-directions). For the design of the stage, the kinematic analysis model and the finite element method (FEM) analysis was undertaken for comparing between PLA with nylon (multi-material), PLA (single material) and aluminum (conventional-material). In addition, two verification experiments were implemented for the fabricated prototype stage. First, to evaluate various assessments (lever ratio, hysteresis, coupling error and resolution), a measurement is carried out using the three capacitive sensors. Then, a two-camera-vision measurement experiment was performed to verify the displacement and lever ratio over the full-scale working range of the fabricated positioning stage, and the results from the experimentation and the FEM analysis were compared. Findings The authors confirmed enhancements in the properties of the lever structure frame, which requires stiffness and of the hinge, which requires flexibility for elastic deformation. Comparing FEM analysis and experimental results, although the performance as shown by experimental results was lower: the maximum difference being 3.4% within the end-point working range; this difference was sufficient to be a plausible alternative for the aluminum-based stage. Originality/value Multi-material monolithic-structure fabrication has an effective advantage in improving the performance of the stage, by using a combination of materials capable of reinforcing the desired characteristics in the necessary parts. It was verified that the fabricated stage can substitute the aluminum-based stage and can achieve a higher performance than single-material stages. Thus, precise-positioning stages can be manufactured in many kinds of structures with various properties and contribute to weight reduction and low costs for application equipment.