Commercialising nanotechnology concepts products markets

Tolfree, David

doi:10.1504/ijnm.2006.011384

Cited by 17 publications

(14 citation statements)

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“…The current trend in numerous industrial domains is to miniaturise products, mainly microelectronic, optic and biomedical devices; the design of industrial robots capable of performing micromanipulation and micro-assembly tasks with a sub-micrometric precision is thus becoming a crucial need (Tolfree, 2006). As the use of flexure joints is compulsory to meet these precision requirements, a key aspect of the robot development consists in the design of the flexure-based mechanisms.…”

Section: Motivationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Concept of modular flexure-based mechanisms for ultra-high precision robot design

Richard

Clavel

2011

Mech. Sci.

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Abstract. This paper introduces a new concept of modular flexure-based mechanisms to design industrial ultra-high precision robots, which aims at significantly reducing both the complexity of their design and their development time. This modular concept can be considered as a robotic Lego, where a finite number of building bricks is used to quickly build a high-precision robot. The core of the concept is the transformation of a 3-D design problem into several 2-D ones, which are simpler and well-mastered. This paper will first briefly present the theoretical bases of this methodology and the requirements of both types of building bricks: the active and the passive bricks. The section dedicated to the design of the active bricks will detail the current research directions, mainly the maximisation of the strokes and the development of an actuation sub-brick. As for the passive bricks, some examples will be presented, and a discussion regarding the establishment of a mechanical solution catalogue will conclude the section. Last, this modular concept will be illustrated with a practical example, consisting in the design of a 5-degree of freedom ultra-high precision robot. MotivationThe current trend in numerous industrial domains is to miniaturise products, mainly microelectronic, optic and biomedical devices; the design of industrial robots capable of performing micromanipulation and micro-assembly tasks with a sub-micrometric precision is thus becoming a crucial need (Tolfree, 2006). As the use of flexure joints is compulsory to meet these precision requirements, a key aspect of the robot development consists in the design of the flexure-based mechanisms. Although this step is now widely investigated for planar and low-DOF (Degrees of Freedom) compliant structures, the development of a whole flexure-based robot is still infrequent, especially in the industrial context. Two examples of industrial prototypes are the Delta 3 robot family, which consists in an adaptation of the classical Delta kinematics for µ-Wire Electro-Discharge Machining (3 DOF in translation, strokes: ±2 mm, resolution: 5 nm, see Fig. 1) (Bacher et al., 2002;Bottinelli et al., 2002), and the 6-DOF Sigma 6 robot, intended to perform active optical alignment (strokes: ±4 mm and ±4• , resolution: 5 nm on the linear axes) (Helmer et al., 2004;Helmer, 2006). Nonetheless, the Correspondence to: M. Richard (murielle.richard@epfl.ch) development time of such ultra-high precision machines, and thus their time-to-market, is considerably high. Furthermore, if the industrial specifications are modified, requiring for instance to add a degree of freedom or to change the position of a rotation centre, the whole design process has to be restarted from the beginning. This paper thus presents a concept of modular flexurebased mechanisms, which allows to rapidly design an ultrahigh precision robot and to easily change its mobility. This approach can be compared to a robotic Lego, where a finite number of building bricks can be chosen and assembled within a small ...

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Section: Motivationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Concept of modular flexure-based mechanisms for ultra-high precision robot design

Richard

Clavel

2011

Mech. Sci.

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“…The current trend in numerous industrial domains is to miniaturize products, mainly microelectronic, optic and biomedical devices; the design of industrial robots capable of performing micromanipulation and micro-assembly tasks with a sub-micrometric precision is thus becoming a crucial need [1]. At the present time, the R&D process to design and build such ultra-high precision machines is still costly.…”

Section: Motivationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modularity and Parallel Kinematics: An Original Design Methodology Applied to High Precision

Richard

Clavel

2011

Field Robotics

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This paper introduces a new methodology to design modular industrial ultra-high precision robots; it aims at significantly reducing both the complexity of their design and their development time. This modular concept can be considered as a robotic Lego®, where a finite number of building bricks is used to quickly design the robot and to easily change its mobility. The core of the concept is the thorough conceptual solution catalogue, which is independent from any mechanical design. This paper will first present the methodology and the techniques to establish this solution catalogue. Then, its application to high precision will include the formulation of hypotheses and a practical example of a 5-degree of freedom ultra-high precision robot design.

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“…New manufacturing methodologies cannot progress without a consensus of standards [2,39] . However, the nanotechnology community has not yet come to an agreement on the need for standards [38] , and therefore the development of internationally acceptable standards will be a challenge [2,39] . Commercialization of previous emerging technologies, such as information and communication technology, has been favored by the development of anticipatory standards.…”

Section: Standardizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Nanomaterials can be produced with a " top -down " or " bottom -up " approach [39,51] . Top -down manufacturing involves processes such as etching, milling, diamond cutting, electrical discharge, and lithography to produce materials at the nanometer scale [39,51] .…”

Section: Manufacturing -Scale -Upmentioning

confidence: 99%