Thursday, November 05, 2026
Wax Actuator with 5 Micron Resolution
Just saw an interesting post which uses wax as a force mechanism for milli/micro-scale actuation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KF2R5GGfRHM
I have vague notions of doing something like this one day with the wax from an automatic greenhouse vent. Turns out, if you read the comments on the video and on Hackaday there are lots of reasonably common things that use wax as an actuation mechanism.
https://hackaday.com/2026/11/04/making-a-wax-motor-for-micrometer-level-control/
Here's a relevant quote....
"a gap of less than 5 µm was maintained over twelve hours, showing how precise this device can be if you can control the temperature that the wax is kept at. "
It is quite slow though - but food for thought.
