Flexures make this six-degree-of-freedom positioner accurate to the micron level

The device is known as the Hexblade, and it comes to us from the lab of [Jonathan Hopkins] at UCLA. We have to admit that sometimes the video below sounds a bit like the “Turbo Encabulator” schtick – “three identical decoupled actuation members arranged in an axisymmetric configuration” might be perfectly descriptive, but it doesn’t follow from the language. Hats off to [Professor Hopkins] to nail the storytelling, though, and really, once you get the lingo down, it all makes perfect sense. The platform is supported by a total of six flexes, which look like bent sheet metal pieces but are actually cut from a solid block of material using wire EDM. Three of the flexions are oriented in the plane of the platform, while the other three are perpendicular to it. The far end of each bend is connected to a voice coil actuator which is surrounded by another bend, this one in a parallelogram. The six actuators can move the platform smoothly through three linear translations (X, Y and Z) and three rotations (roll, pitch and yaw).