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The Actuation Mechanism of 3D Printed Flexure-Based Robotic Microtweezers

We report on the design and the modeling of a three-dimensional (3D) printed flexure-based actuation mechanism for robotic microtweezers, the main body of which is a single piece of nylon. Our design aims to fill a void in sample manipulation between two classes of widely used instruments: nano-scal...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Almeida, Alexander, Andrews, George, Jaiswal, Devina, Hoshino, Kazunori
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6681016/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31337134
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/mi10070470
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author Almeida, Alexander
Andrews, George
Jaiswal, Devina
Hoshino, Kazunori
author_facet Almeida, Alexander
Andrews, George
Jaiswal, Devina
Hoshino, Kazunori
author_sort Almeida, Alexander
collection PubMed
description We report on the design and the modeling of a three-dimensional (3D) printed flexure-based actuation mechanism for robotic microtweezers, the main body of which is a single piece of nylon. Our design aims to fill a void in sample manipulation between two classes of widely used instruments: nano-scale and macro-scale robotic manipulators. The key component is a uniquely designed cam flexure system, which linearly translates the bending of a piezoelectric bimorph actuator into angular displacement. The 3D printing made it possible to realize the fabrication of the cam with a specifically calculated curve, which would otherwise be costly using conventional milling techniques. We first characterized 3D printed nylon by studying sets of simple cantilevers, which provided fundamental characteristics that could be used for further designs. The finite element method analysis based on the obtained material data matched well with the experimental data. The tweezers showed angular displacement from 0° to 10° linearly to the deflection of the piezo actuator (0–1.74 mm) with the linearity error of 0.1°. Resonant frequency of the system with/without working tweezer tips was discovered as 101 Hz and 127 Hz, respectively. Our design provides simple and low-cost construction of a versatile manipulator system for samples in the micro/meso-scale (0.1–1 mm).
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spelling pubmed-66810162019-08-09 The Actuation Mechanism of 3D Printed Flexure-Based Robotic Microtweezers Almeida, Alexander Andrews, George Jaiswal, Devina Hoshino, Kazunori Micromachines (Basel) Article We report on the design and the modeling of a three-dimensional (3D) printed flexure-based actuation mechanism for robotic microtweezers, the main body of which is a single piece of nylon. Our design aims to fill a void in sample manipulation between two classes of widely used instruments: nano-scale and macro-scale robotic manipulators. The key component is a uniquely designed cam flexure system, which linearly translates the bending of a piezoelectric bimorph actuator into angular displacement. The 3D printing made it possible to realize the fabrication of the cam with a specifically calculated curve, which would otherwise be costly using conventional milling techniques. We first characterized 3D printed nylon by studying sets of simple cantilevers, which provided fundamental characteristics that could be used for further designs. The finite element method analysis based on the obtained material data matched well with the experimental data. The tweezers showed angular displacement from 0° to 10° linearly to the deflection of the piezo actuator (0–1.74 mm) with the linearity error of 0.1°. Resonant frequency of the system with/without working tweezer tips was discovered as 101 Hz and 127 Hz, respectively. Our design provides simple and low-cost construction of a versatile manipulator system for samples in the micro/meso-scale (0.1–1 mm). MDPI 2019-07-14 /pmc/articles/PMC6681016/ /pubmed/31337134 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/mi10070470 Text en © 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Almeida, Alexander
Andrews, George
Jaiswal, Devina
Hoshino, Kazunori
The Actuation Mechanism of 3D Printed Flexure-Based Robotic Microtweezers
title The Actuation Mechanism of 3D Printed Flexure-Based Robotic Microtweezers
title_full The Actuation Mechanism of 3D Printed Flexure-Based Robotic Microtweezers
title_fullStr The Actuation Mechanism of 3D Printed Flexure-Based Robotic Microtweezers
title_full_unstemmed The Actuation Mechanism of 3D Printed Flexure-Based Robotic Microtweezers
title_short The Actuation Mechanism of 3D Printed Flexure-Based Robotic Microtweezers
title_sort actuation mechanism of 3d printed flexure-based robotic microtweezers
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6681016/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31337134
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/mi10070470
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