Hot lamination and origami assembly fabrication of miniaturized compliant mechanism

Abstract

We developed a process for fabricating a miniaturized hinged mechanism for microrobots by customizing our previously reported flapping-wing method to fabricate microscopic wing structures resembling insects. Flexible hinges were realized by removing the titanium layers of the structure, which were previously sandwiched between thin polyimide layers. A three-dimensional structure can also be realized via origami-like assembly owing to the hinge structure, where the hinge is made to work as a crease. Details of our method and a reference design are reported through a demonstration of a translation-to-rotation conversion mechanism for a piezoelectric actuator.• Simple fabrication using a single hot lamination and origami-like assembly.• Method based on FPC manufacturing technologies would be easy to implement in a variety of research.• Transmission mechanism for piezoelectric actuators was demonstrated, verifying that the structures fabricated by this process function appropriately.

Keywords

• Compliant mechanism
• Hot lamination
• Origami
• Micro robotics