Study of the sources of inaccuracy of a 3 DOF flexure hinge-based parallel manipulator

In this paper a 3 DOF in translation high-precision parallel manipulator having flexure hinges is considered for the purpose of studying its performances in terms of absolute positioning accuracy in presence of different sources of inaccuracy. Manufacturing errors, gravity and temperature gradients are the sources of inaccuracy analyzed by means of FEM simulation models. The obtained data is used to benchmark the different sources studied and to establish a theoretical limit for the positioning performances of the manipulator. The kinematic analysis is performed using simulation models.