Design, comparison and analysis of a novel 3-D decoupling micromanipulator with different numbers of S-joints

In this paper, the XYZ translational parallel micromanipulator with three-dimension is proposed. The whole mechanism is fully symmetric about x and y axes. The end-effector with the centre of the plane may acquire the ideal effect according to using the different number of S-hinges (spherical hinge with three degrees of freedom). Therefore, the four types of mechanisms with different numbers of S-hinges are analyzed and designed. The output displacements in the x and y directions are found that there are not much impact, but the influence in the z direction is different for four kinds of S-hinges. A comparison is made for the kinematics performances and decoupling characteristics of the different micromanipulators, and then the best one can be selected as the mechanism. The workspaces for the micromanipulator can be produced at last. According to results of the analysis with the ANSYS software, the errors for the x, y and z directions are lower than 2%, and the displacement loss is about 15% in the x and y directions, so the kinematic performances of the novel stage are validated.