Design, analysis and fabrication of silicon microfixture with electrothermal microclamp cell

•A novel microfixturing cell comprising four microclamps is designed and fabricated.•It can position and clamp four microparts simultaneously.•The positioning and clamping of the cell is simulated by finite element modeling.•The numerical results compare well with the experimental values.•The cell is set up to verify the applicability of the microfixturing technique.

Micro handling devices that are extensively utilized for microfixturing operations are of great interest to the researches for investigating their mechanism and actuation principles. Number of microparts that can be handled simultaneously is an important parameters determining efficiency of the microfixture device. However this issue is not sufficiently addressed in the published literature. This paper discusses a microfixturing system equipped with electrothermally actuated microclamps (ETMC) which is used for positioning microparts. The design comprises microclamps on a rotary table, vibrated with random motion through piezoelectric actuation. Each microclamp is composed of two u-shape microactuators which are configured symmetrically to clamp microparts from their sides. Functionality of the microgrippers for submillimeter parts is analytically modeled and simulated using finite element analysis method. The system is then fabricated and experiments are performed to measure variation of microclamp displacement with input voltage change. Comparing analytical and numerical results with the measured values validates the analytical model and simulation results. The microfixture is assembled and its practicality for positioning and clamping microparts is realized.

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