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Performance assessment of a new variable stiffness probing system for micro-CMMs

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posted on 2016-05-20, 12:39 authored by Khalid Alblalaihid, Peter KinnellPeter Kinnell, Simon Lawes, Dorian Desgaches, Richard K. Leach
When designing micro-scale tactile probes, a design trade-off must be made between the stiffness and flexibility of the probing element. The probe must be flexible enough to ensure sensitive parts are not damaged during contact, but it must be stiff enough to overcome attractive surface forces, ensure it is not excessively fragile, easily damaged or sensitive to inertial loads. To address the need for a probing element that is both flexible and stiff, a novel micro-scale tactile probe has been designed and tested that makes use of an active suspension structure. The suspension structure is used to modulate the probe stiffness as required to ensure optimal stiffness conditions for each phase of the measurement process. In this paper, a novel control system is presented that monitors and controls stiffness, allowing two probe stiffness values (“stiff” and “flexible”) to be defined and switched between. During switching, the stylus tip undergoes a displacement of approximately 18 µm, however, the control system is able ensure a consistent flexible mode tip deflection to within 12 nm in the vertical axis. The overall uncertainty for three-dimensional displacement measurements using the probing system is estimated to be 58 nm, which demonstrates the potential of this innovative variable stiffness micro-scale probe system.

Funding

The first author wishes to thank the Saudi Arabian Cultural Bureau in London for the scholarship provided to allow this work. The second author would like to acknowledge the funding provided by EPSRC to support their contributions as part of grant number EP/L01498X/1.

History

School

  • Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering

Published in

Sensors (Switzerland)

Volume

16

Issue

4

Citation

ALBLALAIHID, K. ... et al, 2016. Performance assessment of a new variable stiffness probing system for micro-CMMs. Sensors, 16 (4), 492.

Publisher

MDPI

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/

Publication date

2016

Notes

This is an open access article published by MDPI and distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

ISSN

1424-8220

Language

  • en

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