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Highly Dynamic and Precise Motion

CEDRAT has developed a range of reliable piezoelectric products for high bandwidth & precise motion: APA and PPA actuators as well as various precision mechanisms with driving and control electronics. Applications include micro nano positioning, micro scanning, laser cavity tuning, optic fibber stretching, vibration generation, vibration control (active damping, isolation), fast machining, mirror tilting, flap control, fluid control (metering valve, injection)…

PPAs Parallel Prestress Actuators perform short strokes (0-200micron) and high forces (0-10kN). These actuators are based on an external frame to prestress the piezo ceramics and to provide metal interfaces.Special hollow versions, called HPPA have been developed for laser cavity tuning in Lidars.

APAs Amplified Piezo Actuators perform medium strokes (0-1mm) and high forces (0-10kN). Theseactuators are based on a shell to prestress the piezo ceramics, to amplify the piezoceramic stroke and to provide metal interfaces. The shell also protects the piezo ceramic and renders the actuator insensitive to off-axis forces. Thanks to the amplification, the actuator axial deformation can reach almost 10%. For example the APA900M can provide a stroke of 0.9mm in a height of only 10mm. Efficiency of the amplification has been optimised to keep useful force and stiffness.

Because of their structure and their prestress, these PPA and APA actuators can bear large stresses. Thus, they can be used in dynamic applications offering a large lifetime (>10¹⁰ cycles). This is beneficial in micro-scanners, fast shutters, fast tunning, piezo motors, machining …They can also be operated at resonance for sonic and ultrasonic vibrations generation, as for glass cutting. At last they can bear high external vibrations. It is why they have been adopted in a lot of embedded applications, such as space telescopes and microscopes, military IR cameras (brand names include NASA, ESA, THALES …).

The other advantages of APAs and PPAs are high force, rather large displacements, with nanometre resolution. These actuators, especially the APAs can be scaled to the applications. Toward miniaturisation, micro actuators APA150XXS offer a stroke of 0.15mm and a force of 6N with a mass of about 1gr. Toward very large actuators, an APA500XXL of 0.5mm stroke and 10kN force has been realised for ESO ELT telescope. A large series of actuators cover all intermediate size, with various stroke up to 1mm and forces. Optionally, PPAs and APAs are cryogenic, non-magnetic, vacuum compatible, mechanically damped for reducing effects of vibrations, strain-gages equipped. APAs and PPAs have a very strong heritage from air, space and military fields but Cedrat industrialisation efforts have made them cost-effective.

Various mechanisms have been (or can be) developed using these APA and PPA components:

X, XY and XYZ stages are APA-based X, XY and XYZ mechanisms offering guided motion of 20 to 400 microns. X and XY stages are thermally compensated. They can be controlled by strain gages or by Eddy Current Sensors for close loop operations. The OPDA is a special X stage developed for Oerlikon Contraves for LISA space mission.

TT and DTT mechanisms are APA-based single or double tilt mechanisms of up to 10 mrad rotations, which can be combined with XY and XYZ stages.

OPP is an Objective Piezo Positionner for refocusing functions in optic microscopes; The guided z-stroke is 140micron.

FPS are Fast Piezo Shutters, the opening slot of which is up to 400micron; They are used for switching laser beams and for X-ray beams.

SPA are new linear Stepping Piezo Motors for stroke up to 20mm with blocking at rest, benefiting of the APA heritage. They can perform this long stroke by accumulation of small controllable steps. Using additional fine mode, they also offer a positioning capabilities of less than 1 nm along the 20mm stroke. This new technology receives a MICRONORA2008 Golden Micron Award. Although all APAs can be used to realise SPA motors, the trend is to expand the range of products toward micro motors.

SPT are Servo Piezo Tool for machining of high precision optics, such as aspheric lenses.

CAmu10, CA45 and LA75 are families of Linear Amplifiers dedicated to piezo actuators and mechanisms. CAmu10 is a cheap miniature board for supplying small piezo actuators. CA45 is a one channel cost-effective bipolar low-power lab amplifier. LA75A, LA75B, LA75C are medium-to-high power multi-channel lab amplifier offering high Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR > 100dB), and push-pull operations, for supply of APA, PPA, SPA, XY, TT, DTT and other piezo mechanisms. These electronics may include position sensor conditioners and analog or digital controllers for close loop operations.

UC75 is a powerful 16-bit controller board including National Instrument Core Compact RIO@NI. It benefits of the power of the Labview@NI Libraries to control any system with fast ticks with deterministic time. With this platform and a user-friendly software from Cedrat, the parameters of the controller can be adjusted via PC with an Ethernet link at 100Mbytes/s.