A new cockroach-like compliant mechanism with SLA-3D printing for micromanipulation and micropolishing of biomaterials

Abstract

The traditional compliant mechanisms often employ displacement amplification mechanisms to magnitude the workspace but their displacements are still smaller than 1 mm. Unlike previous studies, the present paper proposes a new conceptual design of compliant mechanism which is inspired from biomechanics of cockroach animal. The developed compliant mechanism for two specific functions, such as microgripper and micropositioner which can handle biomaterials. It can permit a large stroke over 1 mm. Modeling of the performances of the proposed mechanism are built by a couple of adaptive neuro fuzzy inference system (ANIFS) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) where PSO is to optimize the ANFIS. To enhance the performances of the mechanism, accelerated particle swarm optimization (APSO) is utilized to search the optimal design parameters. Lastly, the optimized mechanism is printed by Stereolithography (SLA) 3D technique, and the experimental verifications are performed. The results indicated that circumstance #1, the stroke is about 1.5279 mm, the frequency is 49.02103 Hz, the crosstalk error is 0.01108 mm, and the stress is 8.50514 MPa. In circumstance #2, the stroke is 1.44544 mm, the frequency is 54.51361 Hz, the crosstalk error is 0.0248 mm, and the stress is 8.35604 MPa. In last circumstance, the optimized results are achieved the stroke of 1.62369 mm, frequency of 51.62278 Hz, crosstalk of 0.028141 mm, and stress of 7.71713 MPa. The results indicated that the safety factor of three cases are over 2.5 to ensure a safe operation. The tested results are well satisfied with the simulated results.