Design and characterization of a planar mechanism for passive tilt-compensation

Abstract

This work investigated the design and testing of a planar mechanism for passively compensating tilt between two flat surfaces brought into close proximity. The proposed design uses flexural components which eliminate friction and ensure smooth motion. To achieve this alignment in one of the two surfaces, two heights were fixed. The first height was fixed by a preload from a micrometer head. The second height was fixed by the clamping of a post. This was achieved by using a variation of an existing in-plane clamp design. After the post was clamped, the alignment from the conformal contact of the two surfaces was fixed. An error analysis is presented to estimate the uncertainty in the alignment. For experimentally characterizing the tilt error, capacitance probes were used to measure the alignment errors. It was found that the maximum uncertainty in the alignment was on the order of 50 [mu]rad, making this design suitable for micro-scale planar alignment applications.