Summary:

This tutorial provides a fast-paced hands-on introduction to rapid precision machine design based on FUNdaMENTAL principles including theory and best practices. Topics include: initial error allocation to enable rapid design, principles of accuracy, repeatability and resolution, bearings, structures, and actuators.  Kinematic and elastic averaging-based designs and the implications for bearing life and dynamic performance are stressed with F=kx and w = sqrt(k/m) as recurring themes throughout the design of a machine.  Examples will be presented to show how FUNdaMENTAL principles are critically important for an engineer to understand in order to be able to most effectively use modern design tools such as solid modelling and finite element analysis in the design of precision machines.

Intended Audience:

This tutorial should be helpful for those at the beginning of their careers and also for those who wish to tune up their design approach with linking design approaches with first order analysis to develop designs more rapidly and to check output from FEA.

Learning Outcomes:

• Attendees should expect to leave with new design tools (spreadsheets) they feel comfortable applying and a host of new design ideas for selecting and integrating bearings structures and actuators in precision machines.

*Please note that selecting this tutorial will prevent you from registering for a workshop.

Summary:

This tutorial takes the audience on a guided tour through the workings of mechanical precision systems. It zooms in on the critical challenges that arise at different locations in the system and zooms out to see how they fit within the bigger picture. Along the way, participants will explore design strategies to manage degrees of freedom, minimize disturbances at the point of interest, and design for high stiffness with low mass. For each challenge, design principles will be introduced to help avoid, compensate for, or mitigate the physical effects that influence system performance.

Intended Audience:

This tutorial is for people pursuing their bachelor’s, master’s, or PhD in the field of mechanical engineering and also for engineers relatively new to the field of precision mechanics.

Learning Outcomes:

• Identify key challenges in the design of mechanical precision systems and understand their impact on overall performance.
• Recognize when to use certain design strategies and how they contribute to optimize system performance.

Summary:

Flexure-based stages and mechanisms are used in precision motion control and alignment applications including lithography, metrology instruments, mass balances, telescope mirror positioning, and medical devices. Flexure mechanisms offer frictionless, zero play, limited or zero hysteresis, and contaminant-free motion in ranges of nanometers to millimeters and potentially 180° rotations. Their design needs consideration of numerous parameters such as volume, dynamics, lifetime, stresses in the flexural elements, range of travel, parasitic motion, rotation center shift, and load bearing capability. Therefore, the design process requires a vast range of design and analysis approaches to ensure its functionality.

This tutorial will discuss the analysis of flexure designs and design considerations in terms of stress, stiffness and mobility.

Intended Audience:

Engineers and researchers with some familiarity with flexure mechanisms; master level.

Learning Outcomes:

• Stress aspects of components (operating below yield stress, fatigue life cycle, materials, material properties)
• Stiffness aspects of components (Leafs and notches, matrix linear equations, effect of axial load on leafs, non-linear stiffness)
• Mobility of mechanisms (exact-, under- and overconstraint, etc.). The participant will learn to use an interactive web application for visualization of 3D constraint behavior of flexure mechanisms.

Summary:

Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary field of engineering and engineering management that focuses on how to design, integrate, and manage complex systems over their life cycles. This holds for any system but in high-tech equipment volumes are low, complexity is high and usually time-to-market is critical. This leads to a specific way of “doing SE” and this course will thus focus on precision engineered high-tech equipment.

One half of the course covers theory of important SE principles, namely ‘requirements’ and ‘system decompositions. With ‘requirements’ is meant: the flow from stakeholders needs to requirements, called ‘elicitation’, the art of requirements writing, the different types of requirements, etc.. Methods to decompose the system into functions, modules and their relations will be explained in such a way that it becomes clear that parts of the system can be developed in parallel (concurrent engineering).

Intended Audience:

This course is meant for ‘mid-senior’ systems engineers who have 5 to 10 years of work experience of which 1 to 3 years as a systems engineer/architect. Senior systems engineers who feel the need to go ‘back-to-basic’ are welcome as well and for students or starting engineers this course can provide a first orientation on designing complex systems in high tech business environments.

Learning Outcomes:

• Emphasis will be given on practice. Therefore, the other half of the course consists of exercises where the theory will be practised. The exercises will also demonstrate the importance of human interactions such as effective communication with stakeholders, team leadership and presenting to management.