... you mustn't be focussing on piezos alone (but there are some dirty cheap methodes -- look into the instructables-link).
When busy with this micro-nano-things, I've built some "hydraulic" types too:
- get a medium sized common 50ml syringe, filled with water, connected with a much thiner 5ml syringe (there are even thinner 2ml types available).
- move the handle of the small syringe from min to max (like 50mm)
- and measure the moving range of the big one! - should be something like 30:1 to 100:1, depending on the handles/pistons diamter difference (I've built something like 500:1)
... so moving the small handle let's say 1mm will position the big handle for 10 microns with a 100:1 ratio
Now use the "big handles" as positioners for your micro-assembly stages.
But my most interesting/intriguing idea is around a "morphing body", 3D-printed from elastic resin, resembling the struture of a squid - a thicker "arm", supporting "fingers", all with thin capilaries and cavities - which, when pumped or released, will deform the elastic structure to bend, strech and move te "fingers" ... could be even with force-sensing cavities when measuring the pressure in selcted capilaries ...
And for the size envelope or "footprint":
- something like single to some ten centimetres for the body/support
- a "working area" of some centimetres to millimetres
- positionig accuracies in the range of some microns to nanometers
- combinations of several similar or totally different "positioners" for complex operations
- multi-tools like: tweezer, dispenser, needle, light-fiber (UV-curing), laser, ...
Viktor
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