How does the thickness affect the part motions?.How will using other plastics (or laser/waterjet-cut aluminum) affect the motion?.How do the angles of the springs affect undesired motions (pitch/yaw out of the plane or translations within the plane)?.To increase axial stiffness (for satisfying feel), is it better to use more thin springs or fewer thick springs?.In contrast, my flexure geometric optimization problem has a lot of well-defined dimensions to explore even within the constraints of a cuttable-by-2D-laser design space: This is refreshingly different from popular “generative-design” approaches which iteratively remove unstressed material from parts so you can save 5g of aluminum in exchange for an extra $100k of manufacturing costs and weeks of H.R. Given that I already have a the butterfly flexure in mind, how do I go about optimizing the geometry to get a robust, skookum-feeling rotational mechanism? Of course, this schematic/conceptual design is only half the story. (See lecture 1 for an intro, skip the math of 2 and 3, then watch lecture 4 for the big concepts and sweet pictures.) Until I (thank God) found the author’s far more comprehensible YouTube lecture series. This involved a lot of staring at what I presume are some of the trippier figures which’ve appeared in the journal Precision Engineering: To understand why the butterfly flexure moves the way it does, I read up on FACT, a theoretical framework for designing flexures. I quickly put down my original project to the side to further investigate flexures. I roughly drew a similar design up in CAD:Īnd spent a weekend cutting acrylic and tweaking angles/thicknesses to try and find a satisfying feel: In particular, I figured I’d try this “butterfly” flexure from a wonderful video overview, which is fixed only at the bottom but rotates around the center: Since I have weekend access to a 50W CO2 laser cutter, I figured this would be a perfect opportunity to explore flexures (AKA compliant mechanisms), which are fabricated from a single material with geometry designed to bend only in certain degrees of freedom. However, in my case I need an attachment point that is separate from axis of rotation. Normally one might turn to bearings, basically two concentric rings that can rotate with respect to each other. I’ve spent the last month doing the opposite of back-of-the-envelope estimation: Actually trying to make something work well.įor a yet-to-be-disclosed project, I need a satisfying-feeling axis of rotation - think “ knob feel” from a 1970’s stereo. Thanks to those of you who pointed out to me plant respiration, where carbon is lost as CO2 due to various plant metabolic processes (especially those occurring at night, when the CO2 cannot be recaptured by the plant via photosynthesis). With our metal additive solutions, you can also avoid traditional complex manufacturing assembly by consolidating several parts into one, which improves yield and reliability and reduces labor and inspection costs.Last newsletter we asked “ how fast can plants grow?” and I was unsatisfied with the 20x gap between my rough estimate and reality. These designs can meet the performance requirements of semiconductor capital equipment more precisely, improve the strength-to-weight ratio, and deliver a faster time to market. With years of application engineering experience in the semiconductor industry, we can help you optimize the structural designs of flexures, advanced motion mechanisms, and components. Additive manufacturing gives designers the flexibility to optimize the structural topology of your part (i.e., lightweighting) with a suite of high-strength metal alloys. Additionally, multipart assemblies can be replaced with monolithic parts for increased reliability, improved manufacturing, and yield. How Does Dental Metal 3D Printing Work?Īdditive manufacturing allows for the structural optimization and light-weighting of advanced flexure designs that reduce weight and minimize vibration to meet the exacting requirements of semiconductor capital equipment.
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