Magnetic Linear Motion Mechanism of a 2-Parallel-Finger Hand for Force Operation
Besides assembling, processes like drilling, cutting and pasting are required in various operations in manufacturing of small sized mechanics such as watches, mobile telephones etc. Force control is essential to those dexterous operations. Also absolute positioning of micro-manipulators is required for their autonomous operations. For this purpose, a linear motion hand with two parallel fingers was proposed. It uses a novel parallel link mechanism for linear motion and controls the endeffector by measuring its position with displacement sensors. It uses magnetic suspension technology so that fine force control is realized. An experimental system composed of two one-finger units is presented. The accuracy of positioning is a few μm with a range of tens mm. The accuracy of force control is 3 mN with a range of hundreds gf. The effectiveness of the proposed hand was verified by the application to drilling and fitting.