Development of a compliant-mechanism-based compact threeaxis force sensor for high-precision manufacturing

This paper develops a light-weight compact three-Axis force senor for high-precision manufacturing application. This sensor uses a cubic three-Axial translational compliant parallel mechanism to undergo the loading on its end-effector thereby producing voltages through strain gauges on the deformed beams. The cubic compliant parallel mechanism and sensor system are described at first. Force sensing theoretical analysis is then presented followed by the initial experimental testing and analysis. A linear matrix based multi-Axis loading decoupling method is also proposed so that the sensed force can maximally reflect the actual applied force in each axis. The work in this paper is expected to lay a foundation for further investigation into the online force sensing in the highprecision machine tool.