Design and implementation of a multiple degree of freedom micromanipulation system

Micromanipulators and micropositioners are used to manipulate movement of minute objects under a microscope. Existing systems mainly use piezoceramics, ball-screw based devices, and compliant mechanisms to map macro motion into microns. Flexure joints are compliant mechanisms that cost less to produce than piezoceramics. Also, they do not generate friction and backlash as in turning a screw. This thesis was based upon another idea where flexural notch joints were arranged with intercepting rotational axes. This means the axes were not separated by an offset distance. As a result, joints did not produce rotational offset. By integrating with a parallelogram model, a novel three degrees of freedom (DOF) system, actuated by motors, was developed. Kinematics and finite element results showed it should produce the required three translational DOF. However, experimental results showed that certain test cases did not generate pure translations. An alternative joint actuation method, using Shape Memory Alloy, was studied.