Mech. Sci.

, 7, 119–126, 2016
www.mech-sci.net/7/119/2016/
doi:10.5194/ms-7-119-2016
© Author(s) 2016. CC Attribution 3.0 License.

Mechanical design, analysis and testing of a large-range

compliant microgripper
Yilin Liu and Qingsong Xu
Department of Electromechanical Engineering, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Macau,
Avenida da Universidade, Taipa, Macau, China
Correspondence to: Qingsong Xu (qsxu@umac.mo)
Received: 15 December 2015 – Revised: 9 March 2016 – Accepted: 24 March 2016 – Published: 12 April 2016

Abstract. This paper presents the mechanical design, analysis, fabrication, and testing procedures of a new
large-range microgripper which is based on a flexible hinge structure. The uniqueness of the gripper is that
the gripper arms not only provide large gripping range but also deliver approximately rectilinear movement as
the displacement in nonworking direction is extremely small. The large gripping range is enabled by a mecha-
nism design based on dual-stage flexure amplifier to magnify the stroke of piezoelectric actuator. The first-stage
amplifier is a modified version of the Scott Russell (SR) mechanism and the second-stage amplifier contains
a parallel mechanism. The displacement amplification ratio of the modified SR mechanism in the gripper has
been enlarged to 3.56 times of the conventional design. Analytical static models of the gripper mechanism are
developed and validated through finite-element analysis (FEA) simulation. Results show that the gripping range
is over 720 µm with a resonant frequency of 70.7 Hz and negligible displacement in nonworking direction. The
total amplification ratio of the input displacement is 16.13. Moreover, a prototype of the gripper is developed
by using aluminium 7075 for experimental testing. Experimental results validate the analytical model and FEA
simulation results. The proposed microgripper can be employed in various microassembly applications such as
pick-and-place of optical fibre.

1 Introduction To realize an ultrahigh precision displacement, the flex-

ure mechanisms have been widely applied (Dunning et al.,
2011; Merriam et al., 2013; Tian et al., 2015). In addition,
With the rapid development in micro-electromechanical sys- lots of micro-/nanogrippers have been driven using smart ac-
tems (MEMS) and precision engineering, extensive research tuators, e.g., piezoelectric stack actuators, which have been
on automatic micromanipulation and microassembly tech- applied to biological cell manipulation and MEMS (Bergan-
nology has been carried out. As one of the usual manip- der et al., 2003; Götze and Pagel, 2007). Piezoelectric (PZT)
ulators, microgripper is an essential device in the micro- actuator has many advantages, such as high resolution, faster
/nanomanipulation (Han et al., 2006; Lamers et al., 2015). response speed, larger force output and low power consump-
A typical microgripper consists of the actuator and guid- tion (Khadraoui et al., 2014; Xu, 2013; Zhang et al., 2015).
ing mechanism. Recently, researchers have created differ- But it has limited output displacement. Hence, the output is
ent kinds of the grippers, such as the adhesion-type and not enough for the grasping task in many cases. This issue
mechanical-type grippers (Arai and Fukuda, 1997; Tanikawa can be overcome by resorting to displacement amplification
et al., 1996). In some applications, the gripper operating per- mechanisms.
formance is limited by the gripping range. So, many ampli- Concerning the structure design of a gripper, various de-
fication devices, such as bridge-type amplifiers, have been signs have been devised by using compliant mechanisms.
used to enhance the output displacement (Ai and Xu, 2014). The output motion of the compliant mechanisms is produced
These studies are of practical significance for the realization by using the elastic deformation of the material. Hence, com-
of the microassembly technology.

Published by Copernicus Publications.

120 Y. Liu and Q. Xu: A large-range compliant microgripper

pliant mechanisms can provide some advantages, such as

friction free and lubrication free. However, the output mo-
tions of majority of existing microgrippers are generated in
a rotary way. Hence, if the gripper tips come to contact with
the target object which has a curved shape, the reaction force
will push out the object. Scott Russell (SR) mechanism has
been used to design micromanipulation systems previously
(Hwang et al., 2011; Chang and Du, 1998; Ha et al., 2006).
SR mechanism has a simple structure and it can provide rec-
tilinear output motion. But its disadvantage is also clearly.
That is, its amplification ratio is not large enough. This means
that the SR mechanism may reduce the output displacement
of the actuator. However, the output of a PZT actuator in a
micromanipulator is small already. Hence, one motivation of
this work is to overcome this problem by devising an im-
proved SR mechanism.
Motivated by the aforementioned review, this paper Figure 1. The mechanical structure of the designed microgripper.
presents the mechanical design, fabrication, and testing pro-
cedures of a new large-range compliant microgripper, which
is based on flexure-hinge structure. The structure of the grip-
per is illustrated in Fig. 1. The main advantage of the grip-
per is that the gripper arms not only provide large-range out-
put displacement but also produce approximately rectilinear
movement, because the nonworking directional displacement
is extremely small. In this design, the gripper is actuated by
only one PZT actuator which is fixed in the middle of the de-
vice. The actuator delivers the resolution of 0.45 nm (open-
loop) and its output stroke is 45 µm. A two-sided dual-stage
flexure amplifier is designed to magnify the stroke of PZT
actuator twice. The first-stage amplifier is a modified ver-
sion of the SR mechanism, which is placed in a hypotenuse
position. The monolithic components are connected by us-
ing circular notch hinges (Merken et al., 2004). With this SR
mechanism, the gripper can provide both amplified and ap-
proximately rectilinear output. The amplification ratio of the Figure 2. CAD model of guiding mechanism.
modified SR mechanism has been enlarged to 3.56 times of
the existing design. The second-stage amplifier is a parallel-
ogram which can resist the nonworking directional deforma-
tion. This amplifier has been used to design a metamorphic first-stage and second-stage amplifier design, and dynamics
gripper for microassembly in the previous work (Bruzzone modeling of the gripper.
and Bozzini, 2010).
In this work, the total amplification ratio for the input dis-
placement is 16 and the achieved gripping range is 720 µm.
For experimental verification, a mesoscale prototype is de-
veloped by using a PZT actuator. The actuator has a length 2.1 Guiding mechanism design
of 68 mm. The gripper size can be reduced by changing the
actuation approach. Detailed design procedures are presented For driving the gripper, the actuation displacement is guided
in the following parts of the paper. by four leaf flexures. The computer-aided design (CAD)
model of the guiding mechanism is depicted in Fig. 2. When
the output force of the PZT actuator is exerted on this guid-
ing mechanism, the guiding flexures produce a purely trans-
2 Mechanism design and modeling lational movement. Each leaf flexure behaviors like a fixed-
guided beam. In view of the boundary conditions of the two
The mechanism design of the microgripper is presented in ends of the beam, i.e., the rotation angle of the ends is zero
this section. It involves the guiding mechanism design, the and the deformation of the guided end is δx , the following

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Y. Liu and Q. Xu: A large-range compliant microgripper 121

equations are generated.

F l2 Ml
0 = − (1)
2EI EI
F l3 Ml 2
δx = − , (2)
2EI EI
where l is the length of the leaf flexure, F denotes the force,
M represents the moment, and E is elastic modulus of the
material.
The moment of inertia can be calculated as follows.
mb l 2
Ib = , (3)
12
where mb is the mass of the leaf flexure.
The solutions to the above two Eqs. (1) and (2) are shown
below. Figure 3. Schematic of Scott Russell mechanism.
Fl
M = (4)
2 2.2 First-stage amplifier design
F l3
δx = (5) The first-stage amplifier is a modified version of the SR
12EI
mechanism. At first, the model of the SR mechanism will
From the kinetic energy equation and the kinematic rela- be introduced. As is known, when the lines AB = BC = BD
tionship of the mechanism, the expression of the equivalent = L, the structure will be consider as SR mechanism, which
mass can be derived: is shown in Fig. 3.
 2  2 In order to solve the relationship between the input at
1 1 1
M1 = ma + 4mb + 4Ib , (6) point A and the output at point C, assume that the displace-
4 8 (8l)2 ment 1yA is close to zero after input. Then, in the right tri-
where ma is the mass without the leaf flexure, as shown in angle, one has the relationship (11). By solving the trigono-
Fig. 6 later. metric relationship, the results of output displacement and
The potential energy of the guiding flexures mechanism is the amplification ratio can be obtained as shown in Eqs. (12)
obtained as follows. and (13):
 
2Ks q 2 (1yA + lAD )2 + (1xc + lCD )2 ≈ lAD 2 2
 
1 + lCD , (11)
V =4 Ks θz2 = , (7)
2 (8l)2  1
2 2
1xC = lDC − 2LAD 1yA − 1yA2 − lDC , (12)
where Ks is the stiffness, θz is the rotational angle, and q
denotes the deformation at the end of each beam. The details  12
− (2L)2 − lAD
2

can be referred to the previous work (Xu, 2013). R1 ≈ = − tan α, (13)
For the presented structure, the stiffness Ks is obtained be- lAD
low (Xu, 2013): where L = 38.84 mm and lAD = 72.75 mm in this work.
From the above results of the amplification ratio (13), it is
EI
Ks = 2γ Kθ , (8) seen that the output of SR mechanism is decreased when the
l length of segment CD is smaller than that of AD. It means
where γ = 0.85 and Kθ = 2.6686. that tan α is always less than one. Hence, although SR mech-
Hence, the natural frequency of the guiding mechanism is anism can provide a rectilinear output, the amplification ratio
calculated as shown below. is less than one. This is the disadvantage of the conventional
s SR mechanism. The angle α is set as 20.47◦ in this work.
K With this setting, the amplification ratio of the SR mecha-
f= , (9)
M1 nism is calculated as follows.
2
 21
− (2L)2 − lAD

where
R1 ≈ = − tan(20.47) = −0.37 (14)
Ks lAD
K= . (10)
(4l)2 The minus sign means the negative direction of the output
displacement.

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122 Y. Liu and Q. Xu: A large-range compliant microgripper

Figure 4. Modified version of Scott Russell mechanism.

Figure 5. Model of the second-stage amplifier.

In the modified SR mechanism design, the ratio between
AB and BC is different. This setup not only improves the
amplification ratio of the SR mechanism, but also produces structure of this module and its main parameters are illus-
approximately rectilinear output. The new amplification ratio trated in Fig. 5. By combining the two amplifiers together, the
can be calculated as follows: performance of this microgripper can be further improved.
The final amplification ratio of the gripper can be calculated
(lAB + lBC ) tan α
R2 ≈ . (15) by:
lAB
(lAB + lBC ) lIG tan α
A CAD model of this modified amplifier and its main param- R3 ≈ (19)
lAB lyIE
eters are shown in Fig. 4. The input from the PZT actuator is
applied at the point A in the y axis direction. The new ampli- That is,
fication ratio can be calculated as follows:
(22.01 + 55.89) × 83 × tan(20.4)
(22.01 + 55.89) tan 20.4 R3 ≈ = 8.59, (20)
R2 ≈ = 1.32, (16) 22.01 × 12.75
22.01
which means that the amplification ratio R3 is 8.59 for one
where LAB = 22.01 mm and lBC = 55.89 mm. gripper arm. During the gripping operation, the left and right
The ration η between the amplification ratios of the new arms of the gripper move together. Considering that there is
design and conventional SR mechanisms is obtained as fol- only one actuator in the gripper device, the input has been
lows. amplified by 17.18 times.
R2 (lAB + lBC ) Referring to Fig. 5, the rotational stiffness of point I can
η= ≈ (17) be calculated by (Ai and Xu, 2014):
R1 lAB
1
That is,

2

 Fy lHG 
1.32 (22.01 + 55.89) Kr =   . (21)
η= ≈ = 3.56, (18) l2
0.37 22.01 4 + FG
2 lIG

which indicates that the amplification ratio has been enlarged The input stiffness can be calculated as:
by 3.56 times with the new SR mechanism.
Kr
Kr + 2
lIG
2.3 Second-stage amplifier design K= 2
. (22)
lHG
The second-stage amplifier is a parallelogram mechanism
with leaf flexures. After the first stage of amplification, the Moreover, the equivalent mass of the gripper is shown be-
ratio is not large enough. So, the main objective of this mod- low:
ule as an essential device is to further enlarge the output twice 9 18 1287 4797
and to resist the nonworking directional displacement. The M = M1 + m2 + m3 + m4 + m5 , (23)
5 125 25 40

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Y. Liu and Q. Xu: A large-range compliant microgripper 123

Table 1. Properties of aluminium 7075 alloy.

Item Value Units

Elongation 11 % –
Density 2810 kg m−3
Modulus of elasticity 72 GPa
Yield strength 455 MPa
Tensile strength 524 MPa
Poisson ratio 0.33 –

Table 2. The first-six resonant frequencies.

Mode Frequency (Hz)

Figure 6. Mass distribution of the gripper. 1 71.715
2 77.338
3 148.82
where M1 is calculated from Eq. (6) and the mass distribution 4 149.84
of the gripper is illustrated in Fig. 6. 5 440.55
Then, the natural frequency in unit of Hertz can be calcu- 6 443.31
lated by
r
1 K Table 3. Specification of the PZT actuator.
f= . (24)
2π M
Item Value Units
Model P840.3 –
Open loop travel 45 µm
3 Finite-element analysis simulation
Pushing force 1000 N
Pulling force 50 N
In order to verify the analytical models as developed in the Outer length 12 mm
previous subsection, finite-element analysis (FEA) simula- Length 68 mm
tion is carried out with ANSYS to test the performance of Resolution (open loop) 0.9 (0.45) nm
the gripper. The simulation study includes the output dis-
placement, nonworking directional displacement, and modal
analysis. The selected material is aluminium 7075, which is
addition, modes 3 and 4 are caused by the vertical transla-
known to have good mechanical properties like resistance to
tions in the y axis, and modes 5 and 6 are induced by the
stress corrosion cracking and high strength in low tempera-
bending of the gripper arm around the z axis.
ture. The properties of the material are listed in Table 1. The
From the simulation results, it is observed that the objec-
simulation study is necessary to confirm the performance be-
tive of design has been achieved. This microgripper can pro-
fore the manufacturing of the prototype.
vide both a large-range output and an approximately rectilin-
As shown in Fig. 7a, the maximum output displacement of
ear movement. The rectilinear movement is useful for grip-
the gripper is 364.4 µm when the input displacement for the
ping various micro-particles in practice.
gripper is assigned as 45 µm, which is the maximum output
of the PZT actuator as used in the developed prototype. In
addition, it is derived from Fig. 7b that the output displace- 4 Experimental results
ment in the nonworking direction is only 61.2 nm, which is
negligible in comparison with the output displacement in the After the FEA simulation verification, the device has been
working direction. manufactured. Then, an experimental study is conducted to
Moreover, modal analysis simulation has been conducted test the performance of the prototype. The aim of the experi-
to examine the dynamic performance of the gripper struc- ment is to verify the output displacement of the gripper. The
ture in terms of resonant mode shapes and frequencies of the experimental setup is depicted in Fig. 9. A laser sensor is
gripper structure. The simulation results of the first six reso- used to detect the output displacement of the gripper tip. The
nant mode shapes are shown in Fig. 8, and the corresponding sensor has a resolution about 25 nm. A PZT actuator is used
resonant frequencies are described in Table 2. It is seen that to actuate the gripper and its specifications are listed in Ta-
the first frequency of the gripper is 70.7 Hz. A high natural ble 3. Moreover, the actuator has a working voltage range of
frequency enables a quick response of the gripper device. In 0–100 V.

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124 Y. Liu and Q. Xu: A large-range compliant microgripper

Figure 7. FEA simulation results. (a) Maximum output of the gripper, (b) displacement in nonworking direction.

It is observed that when the driving voltage approaches Table 4. Experimental results of output displacement of the com-
to 100 V, the output displacement arrives at the largest value. pliant microgripper.
The results collected by the laser sensor are shown in Table 4.
The open and close states of the gripper tips are illustrated in Item Test 1 Test 2 Test 3 Test 4
Fig. 10. Moreover, for the purpose of comparison, the ana- Output displacement
lytical model result, FEA simulation result, and experimental of one gripper arm (µm) 362 363 360 363
result are listed in Table 5. It is observed from Table 5 that the
experimental result is very close to the analytical and simula-
tion results, which verifies the effectiveness of the developed Table 5. Comparison of the results.
models.
The results of the conducted experimental studies verify Item Test 1 Test 2 Test 3
the design of this new large-range compliant microgripper. A Output displacement
modified version of SR mechanism is proposed to enhance of one gripper arm (µm) 362 363 360
the performance of the original version. The objective is to Error 7.2 % 0.88 % –
enlarge the amplification ratio and to resist the nonworking
directional displacement by using one more parallelogram
module. The FEA simulation shows that the nonworking di- objects (Komati et al., 2013; Xu, 2015). In the future work,
rectional displacement is 61.2 nm. This performance can be the force sensing and control system module will be realized
optimized by an optimum design to be conducted in the fu- to deliver a desired output force of the gripper for executing
ture work. related micromanipulation tasks. Pertinent application study
In order to obtain a larger gripping range in micromanipu- will be carried out as well.
lation, the dual-stage amplifier provides an amplification ra-
tio of 8.066 per arm. Totally, the gripping range is enlarged to
be 16.13 times of the driving displacement, which is enabled 5 Conclusions
by the proposed new gripper design with modified SR ampli-
In this paper, a new design of large-displacement gripper is
fication mechanism. As compared with the existing grippers,
analyzed, fabricated, and tested. Each module of the grip-
in which only one arm is actuated, the two-arm actuation ap-
per is designed in detail. After the analytical model has been
proach with dual-stage amplification mechanism produces a
developed, simulation study has been conducted to verify
much larger output gripping range.
the performance of the design. Finally, a prototype of the
For practical applications, the grasp force exerted on the
gripper has been manufactured for experimental testing. Re-
object should lie in an appropriate range (Liu et al., 2009;
sults show that the gripping range is 0–720 µm along with a
Xu, 2015). Hence, the grasp force regulation is necessary to
large displacement amplification of 16.13. It provides enough
guarantee that an appropriate force is applied to the grasped
output motion for the manipulation of majority of micro-

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Y. Liu and Q. Xu: A large-range compliant microgripper 125

Figure 8. The first six resonant mode shapes (a–f).

particles. The amplification ratio of the modified SR mech- force control module will be implemented on the developed
anism has been enlarged by 3.56 times relative to the tra- gripper to produce a desired output force dedicated to related
ditional design. In the future work, a precision motion and micromanipulation tasks.

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126 Y. Liu and Q. Xu: A large-range compliant microgripper

Dunning, A. G., Tolou, N., and Herder, J. L.: Review Article: In-
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