Design of large-range XY compliant parallel manipulators based on parasitic motion compensation

This paper presents a large-range decoupled XY compliant parallel manipulator (CPM) with good dynamics (no under-constrained/non-controllable mass). The present XY CPM is composed of novel parallelogram flexure modules (NPFMs) that are parallel four-bar mechanisms as prismatic (P) joints with four identical monolithic cross-spring flexural pivots, flexure revolute (R) joints. The parasitic translation of the NPFM is compensated via the rotational centre shift of the flexure R joint thereof based on the prior art. The optimization function and optimised geometrical parameters are investigated for the NPFM at first to achieve the largest translation. The design of a large-range XY CPM is then implemented according to the fully symmetrical 4-PP parallel kinematic mechanism (PKM) and through using the optimised NPFMs. Finally, the simplified analytical stiffness modelling and finite element analysis (FEA) are undertaken for the static and/or dynamic characteristics analysis of the 4-PP XY CPM. It is shown from FEA in the example case that the present 4-PP XY CPM has good performance characteristics such as large-range motion space (10 mm × 10 mm with the total dimension of 465 mm × 465 mm), no non-controllable mass, monolithic configuration, maximal kinematostatic decoupling (cross-axis coupling effect less than 1.2%), maximal actuator isolation (input coupling effect less than 0.13%) and well-constrained parasitic rotation (less than 0.4 urad). In addition, the stiffness-enhanced NPFM using over-constraint is proposed to produce a first/second modal frequency of about 100 Hz for the resulting XY CPM.