Title
Micropositioning and Fast Transport Using a Contactless Micro-Conveyor.
Abstract
The micro-conveyor is a 9 x 9 mm(2) manipulation surface able to move millimeter-sized planar objects in the four cardinal directions using air flows. Thanks to a specific design, the air flow comes through a network of micro-channels connected to an array of micro-nozzles. Thus, the micro-conveyor generates an array of tilted air jets that lifts and moves the object in the required direction. In this paper, we characterize the device for transport and positioning tasks and evaluate its performances in terms of speed, resolution and repeatability. We show that the micro-conveyor is able to move the object with a speed up to 137 mm . s(-1) in less than 100 ms whereas the positioning repeatability is around 17.7 mu m with feedback control. The smallest step the object can do is 0.3 mu m (positioning resolution). Moreover, we estimated thanks to a dynamic model that the speed could reach 456 mm . s(-1) if several micro-conveyors were used to form a conveying line.
Year
DOI
Venue
2014
10.3390/mi5010066
MICROMACHINES
Keywords
Field
DocType
distributed manipulation,contactless manipulation,air-flow conveyor,micromanipulation,feeding
Simulation,Mechanical engineering,Cardinal direction,Electronic engineering,Planar,Airflow,Materials science,Repeatability,Speedup
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
5
1
2072-666X
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
4
0.55
3
Authors
6