Design and construction of the motion mechanism of an XY micro-stage for precision positioning

A motion mechanism of an XY micro-stage is designed and constructed for precision positioning of light weight objects. A driving unit, which consists of two PZTs and a friction component made by permanent magnet, is mounted on the center of the stage base for driving the stage moving plate made by steel in the X- and Y-directions based on a friction drive. The moving plate is attached on the friction component by the magnetic force. Leaf springs are employed to guide the X- and Y-directional motions of the moving plate over a range of ±1 mm in both directions. The stage motion mechanism, which dominates the overall size of XY micro-stage, has a compact size of 24 mm (X) × 24 mm (Y) × 5 mm (Z). The basic performances of the stage motion mechanism have been investigated by experiments.