Monday, January 27, 2025
Complementary flexure XY Table prototype
I've been searching for a way to make the XY Table shorter so I can stuff it under the binocular microscope. I looked at making a traditional flat XY flexure table, but the 3D printed ones sag in the middle too much (and forces on the X and Y axes are very different). The nice thing about the original Maus XY Table is that the flexures can actually take a lot of weight, so I took a flat design and made one set of flexures perpendicular to the other. The first attempt looks like this:
Those narrow flexures take a lot more weight in that orientation, which is a bit counter-intuitive. It needs a bit more bracing, and the yellow bits need to be replaced with a Maus slide holder, but it moves very nicely.
The clever part of using complementary flexures is that when one is "shortened" by flexing, the other one lifts it up. So I can use a shorter table, and not have the height changing much when it moves around. Time will tell if this is a good idea or not, but if it works I'll be able to make the mechanism much more compact. Assembly is simplified a bit too.
It's a bit too short for the current axis drivers, though it might be about right for the proposed simplified wire actuator. Tucking the UV source underneath it will be a challenge, however.
