Design of a 4 degrees of freedom decoupled monolithic compliant alignment mechanism for additive manufacturing

Optical systems require kinematic mounts to align the optical components relative to a light path during installation. Depending on the application and the exact type of optical component, these mechanisms may require up to six degrees of freedom (DOFs). An industry where such optical systems are important is the semiconductor industry where high precision alignment is required for production and inspection. Hysteresis, crosstalk and resonance vibrations result in reduced precision of existing devices. In this research a monolithic decoupled adjustable optical mount manufactured using additive manufacturing is proposed as a solution. A prototype was manufactured in grade 5 titanium using Laser Beam Melting. This prototype has 4 DOFs which can be adjusted in planar translational motion with a range of 1 mm and in rotational out of plane motion with a range of 1 mrad and a resolution of 10 μm and 10 μrad. Experiments show a first eigenfrequency of 610 Hz.