Design of a Flexure XY Micropositioning Stage With Large Hollow Platform

This paper presents the design of a new flexure-based XY micropositioning stage with a large hollow platform, which is suitable for practical use with a microscope. The designed mechanism has a parallel-kinematic structure and is actuated by two voice coil motors. By employing multistage compound parallelogram flexures (MCPF), the stage is designed as a four-layer structure, which produces a motion output platform with a large hollow space and large motion range. Analytical modeling is carried out for the parametric design of the stage. Evaluation results show that the designed XY stage exhibits a large safety factor and high natural frequency. Moreover, the large hollow platform is well-suited for practical application with a microscope.