A 6-DOF Compliant Joints-Based Precision Parallel Positioner System Driven by Dual Piezoelectric Actuators

A precision compliant parallel-structure positioner is presented in this paper, which is dually driven by six piezoelectric motors and six piezoelectric ceramics respectively. This compliant system has a load capacity higher than 2 kg because the parallel mechanism is adopted as the main architecture. This system also can provide larger workspace and higher accuracy simultaneously compared with the conventional compliant positioner systems, because it perfectly integrates two kinds of piezoelectric actuators in one parallel system. The upper platform has the stroke of 10 mm in three linear motion directions and of 6 arc-degrees in three angle motion directions respectively for the adoption of piezoelectric motors as the large motion range actuators. The positioning resolution and repeatability of the upper platform is nanometer scale for the adoption of piezoelectric ceramics as the high precision actuators.