Design and Analysis of Flexural Mechanism-A Short Review

Flexure mechanisms are a designer’s delight. Except for the limits of elasticity, flexures present few other boundaries as far as applications are concerned. Flexures have been used as bearings to provide smooth and guided motion. For example in precision motion stages; as springs to provide preload, for example in the brushes of a DC motor or a camera lens cap etc. Flexural joints are widely used in precision motion stages and micro robotic mechanisms due to their monolithic construction. It is difficult and expensive to make such compact mechanism using traditional machining methods. In addition, the traditional mechanisms machining methods are limited to simple design. To reduce the cost of fabrication and also to allow more complex designs, object i.e. a rapid prototyping machine is proposed to be used to build the mechanism. Traditional motors, gears, and revolute joints are not able to meet the requirements due to existence of backlash between moving parts. Hence, the flexure joints are more popularly used. One of the primary applications of flexures is in the design of motion stages. It strives to bridge the gap between intuition and mathematical analysis in flexure mechanism design. This paper presents design and analysis of flexure mechanism.