Design of a Self-closing Compliant “mouse Trap” for Micro Assembly

A design of a micro latching fastener – a micro “mouse trap” – is presented, which has self-closing compliant latches that clamp a free planar part inserted between them. The selfclosing of the latches is induced by the insertion of the part which releases the potential energy stored in the “cocked” state of the device, in the manner of a mouse trap. The closed latch can re-open by cocking the micro mouse trap. The selfclosing action of the micro mouse trap allows the inaccurate insertion of the free part and leads to very accurate final positioning, with the insertion force required to induce the selfclosing being very small. The micro mouse trap is also reusable since the release of the clamped part is done non-destructively. The micro mouse trap can be used, for instance, for assembly and temporal clamping/positioning of micro-scale parts, and electromechanical/opto-mechanical connectors.