Friday, January 31, 2025
Evolution of Maus C flexures
Just as a side note, these are the prototypes that evolved into the Maus C ('C' for Complementary) flexure system.
I started out with a couple a flat designs. Top left is mine, top right one I tried off Printables. The weight of the stage caused the flexures to sag, but I noticed they didn't deform vertically so I flipped the whole thing 90 degrees.
The latest one (but 10mm too short, dammit) is in the bottom right. That has the middle section of the flexures as a more solid beam, which significantly reduces the tendency for the platform to torque. It might be possible to make a print-in-place version of the completed assembly but I'm still fiddling with the overall design too much, so it can stay as a kit of flexures for now.
I'm reprinting the latest flexure panel 10mm wider and will rebuild Maus C with those. Probably have fiddle a few bits of the driver framework to fit. In parallel, I'm working on affixing the Z axis and probe holder to bring the thing into a single unit. When it has tested good I'll pop it on github as part of the Maus library.
Assembling this has also spurred further development in the Metriccano library, as I discover new beams and brackets that need to exist to make Metriccano fit together in useful configurations.
