Recently, the precision manufacturing and measuring devices is rapidly improved and developed. Optical devices, precision machine tools, and semiconductor manufacturing machines are the typical examples. These devices are based on the precision positioning system and the needed positioning accuracy level has reached the level of nano-meter. For that reason, there are many researches for the development of the precision positioning system. And the researches are classified into two kinds. The first is the research of the fine positioning system composed of PZT and flexure guide mechanism, which has nano-meter level accrucy and several tens of maicrons` moving range. The second is the research of the devices that has a wide moving range from several tens of millimeters to several hundreds of millimeters, high resulution and repeatability and fast response. But there is rarely the researches of the positioning system whose moving range is several tens of millimeters. For that purpose we can use the latter devices, but they have many problems like a large and complicate structure, control burden and a large cost. Therfore, in this study the aim is the development of the positioning system suitable for this purpose. In addition, its moving direction is two directions of x, y-axis and it has a small size and a compact structure. In conclusion, this study aims at developing of the compact ultraprecision XY-stage having nano-meter accrucy and several tens of millimeters` moving range.
The specification of the stage is 2mm moving range and the limited total size of 100×100×50mm. The novel precision XY-stage composed of the leaf spring guide mechanism whose type is double compound linear spring and VCM(Voice-coil moter) is proposed. Because the design variables and system parameters are become quite complicated, an optimal design is used. The cost funstion of optimal design is to maximize the 1st natural frequencies of XY-stage. It guarantees fast response. Before the optimal design, the modeling of XY-stage is needed. This study presents a computer-based method automatically generates equations of motion for leaf spring mechanism. The leaf spring guide mechanism is modeled by it and VCM is modeled by permeance method. The performance prediction of the designed XY-stage is verified via experiments. Actual experiments demonstrate that the simulated model can predict with a deviation of about 10% from experimental results. The 1st natural frequencies of XY-stage are 27.34Hz, 22.79Hz for x, y axis and the resolution is 10nm. A 2mm moving range is satisfied.
