Design of a stiffness-adjustable micro-motion stage

The manufacturing errors of flexure hinge are accumulated in their operation, which is not conducive to the control of the motion stage and the high manufacturing accuracy leads to high costs. Therefore, a novel micro-motion stage with adjustable stiffness is proposed to ensure that the motion stage has better performance at low cost. The design formulas are deduced and verified by using finite element analysis (FEA). The practical performance of a manufactured motion stage is measured and the adjustable capability of the stage is tested. Experiment results indicate that the motion stage can effectively compensate the performance error caused by the manufacturing error of flexure hinge.