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Hack Chat Transcript, Part 2

A event log for Low-Cost Nanopositioning Hack Chat

The world's getting smaller

dan-maloneyDan Maloney 06/15/2022 at 21:280 Comments
Edwin Hwu12:15 PM

The encoder costs around 150 Euro including the scale.....

Mark J Hughes12:15 PM
Affordable to some - not so affordable to others.

Mark J Hughes12:15 PM
(See y'all -- I'll have to read the rest in the transcripts)

Edwin Hwu12:15 PM
yeah.....more flexiblity for research institutes....

placethesundontshine12:15 PM
how large a max displacement can those measure?

John12:16 PM
Which series encoder did you use? The accuracy seems to be "+/- 1um"

John12:16 PM
... oh per meter?

Edwin Hwu12:16 PM
The encoder has two different types of scale: glass, metal tape. The metal tape can go meters

polyfractal12:16 PM
150euro, that's quite a bit less than I expected. That's definitely doable! Especially since a comparable piezo stage from Newport or Thor or whatever is like 2-5k USD

Prof. Jim Brenner12:16 PM
We are using interferometry in the way that both @Edwin Hwu and @Jakob Wulfkind suggest. @Edwin Hwu - tell us a little about your global view for how to accomplish the nanopositioning. I have done scanning tunneling and atomic force microscopy for a long time. In those systems, you have a stepper motor to get the coarse motion and a piezoelectric motor to get the fine motion. How are you doing this?

Edwin Hwu12:17 PM
Let me check the model...because I use them 6 years ago...things chaged

Edwin Hwu12:18 PM
I built UHV STM, AFM and nano TXM before....I use my home made positioner for approaching and scanning

Edwin Hwu12:18 PM

Allyson-Robert12:19 PM
I seem to be unable to download a full text version of the u-LBIC conference contribution :/

Joachim Fischer12:19 PM
@Edwin Hwu I guess for the long travel range you demonstrated, encoders are the right choice. I thought about something with 0.5mm travel and 200nm repeatability or so... Do you have any experience with Hall sensors? Not sure if the resolution is high enough... But they are likely super cheap.

Edwin Hwu12:19 PM
https://www.instructables.com/A-Low-Cost-Atomic-Force-Microscope-%E4%BD%8E%E6%88%90%E6%9C%AC%E5%8E%9F%E5%AD%90%E5%8A%9B%E9%A1%AF%E5%BE%AE%E9%8F%A1/ one of my hobby work

placethesundontshine12:20 PM
Out of curiosity how are those metal tapes encoded?

Edwin Hwu12:20 PM
I am not so familiar with the magnetic one...but my student told me that they are robust

Edwin Hwu12:21 PM
Those metal tapes has microscale marks....so be careful not to touch them

placethesundontshine12:22 PM
What is the best way to get in get in touch with you to collaborate on closed loop positioning?

Edwin Hwu12:22 PM

Edwin Hwu12:23 PM
This is the one I am using

Edwin Hwu12:23 PM
1.2 nm

Hash12:23 PM
I am amazed at the positioning speed in your videos, were those using your open source controller?

Edwin Hwu12:23 PM
@placethesundontshine you can contact me by email: etehw@dtu.dk

Edwin Hwu12:24 PM
or my gmail: whoand@gmail.com

Edwin Hwu12:24 PM
I also have some colleagues in DTU like to build one

Edwin Hwu12:25 PM
I really like to open source closed loop system, because it is more valuable and useful

polyfractal12:25 PM
Have you done any force measurements on these? I assume they are pretty low force output before the magnet starts to slip?

polyfractal12:25 PM
also, any plans for a goniometer or tip/tilt device? :)

Edwin Hwu12:26 PM
@polyfractal you are right, but if we use different mechanism for heavy weight

Edwin Hwu12:26 PM
I built tip till also...let me find photo

Edwin Hwu12:26 PM

Jakob Wulfkind12:27 PM
Have you explored the possibility of using photoelectric effect to fine-tune a piezo actuator's extension?

Edwin Hwu12:27 PM

Paul McClay joined  the room.12:27 PM

polyfractal12:27 PM
very cool! Looks like the tweezers are piezo-actuated with a flexure too. neat! is the tip/tilt mechanism flexure based as well?

Edwin Hwu12:27 PM
photoelectric effect? not yet touched ;P

polyfractal12:28 PM
(unless that "tweezer" is an afm cantilever or something?)

Dan Maloney12:28 PM
So are hard drive head positioners essentially "out of the box" nanopositioners? Or do they need some fine tuning?

Edwin Hwu12:28 PM
This 7 axes system was my fun work haha!

polyfractal12:28 PM
😄

Edwin Hwu12:28 PM
Yes, all flexture based rol/tip/til by 3 linear actuator

Dan Maloney12:28 PM
OIW, are the tracks nanoscale apart on a disk platter?

placethesundontshine12:29 PM
yes they are

polyfractal12:29 PM
really fantastic work, hope you publish something about that 7ax system (or a blogpost or something 🙂)

Edwin Hwu12:29 PM
@Dan Maloney you are right! the hard drive arm is super precise!

Edwin Hwu12:30 PM
Thanks! My bad habit was not to do proper testing then moved to next one...so the 7 axes system is not publishable...

Edwin Hwu12:31 PM
Let me find the 7 axes sysetm video

polyfractal12:31 PM
♥ thanks!

Paul McClay12:31 PM
I think hdd arms also have the superpower of higher bandwidth than a lot of "nano" scale actuators, no?

Edwin Hwu12:31 PM
Play Video

polyfractal12:32 PM
oh! that's very clever

placethesundontshine12:32 PM
Would you be interested in open sourcing those 7 axis for others to chip at?

Dan Maloney12:32 PM
I dig those flexures!

John12:32 PM
I found this interesting: https://documents.westerndigital.com/content/dam/doc-library/en_us/assets/public/western-digital/collateral/tech-brief/tech-brief-hgst-micro-actuator.pdf

placethesundontshine12:33 PM
ah yep that is somewhat reminiscent of a hard drive head flexure

Prof. Jim Brenner12:33 PM
@Edwin Hwu - It looks like you might have been part of the LEGO2NANO contest many years ago? Am I correct? I had a student start working toward that, but he veered off and focused on developing a metal 3D printer instead. That was a fascinating contest. Part of the focus of the maker education textbook that I am writing is how most of my work evolved out of trying to build and/or repair nanotechnology equipment. It looks like you have a very similar background.

Edwin Hwu12:33 PM
@placethesundontshine for sure! I hope you guys can help me to test the performance and publish in HardwareX

John12:33 PM
How do you make the flextures? Wire EDM?

anfractuosity12:33 PM
What did you use the 7 axis stage for out of interest? very cool!

Edwin Hwu12:34 PM
Exactly, LEGO2NANO....I developed atomic force microscope (normally 100k USD) that can be assembled by school kids and get nano resolution imaging

Edwin Hwu12:34 PM
@John exactly! I love EDM ;3

Edwin Hwu12:35 PM
7 axis stage was for graphene deposition and manuplation....

Dan Maloney12:35 PM
Time for a DIY EDM Hack Chat, methinks...

Edwin Hwu12:35 PM
Play Video

Merijn Otterman joined  the room.12:36 PM

Joachim Fischer12:36 PM
The rotating screw will be very usefull in optics...

how is it working?

John12:36 PM
I wonder what will happen to motor prices when the first NewScale Squiggle patent expires

Joachim Fischer12:37 PM
(I guess similarly to the picomotor stuff, but I cant imagine)

Edwin Hwu12:37 PM
The rotary one is using two pzt and contact ped to drive the screw in opposite direction...

Edwin Hwu12:37 PM
Actually that's different from picomotor ;p

Merijn Otterman12:38 PM
Does the use of the screw mean it also has high driving force and is it locked when powered off?

Joachim Fischer12:38 PM
ok

Edwin Hwu12:38 PM
@Merijn Otterman exactly! this rotary piezo motor can drive 5 kg load vertically

Hash12:39 PM
Are there any low cost commercial controllers you recommend? I'm excited to try to machine one of the axis in my garage!

Edwin Hwu12:39 PM

Edwin Hwu12:40 PM
haha....the commercial controller I like is from AttoCube, but cost 15k USD

Edwin Hwu12:40 PM
You can use Arduino plus DAC board plus piezoDrive HV amplifier

Hash12:40 PM
lol, low cost is relative

Edwin Hwu12:40 PM

https://www.adafruit.com/product/935

ADAFRUIT 
ADAFRUIT INDUSTRIES

MCP4725 Breakout Board - 12-Bit DAC with I2C Interface

Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits MCP4725 Breakout Board - 12-Bit DAC with I2C Interface [STEMMA QT / qwiic] : ID 935 - Your microcontroller probably has an ADC (analog -> digital converter) but does it have a DAC (digital -> analog converter)??? Now it can!

Read this on Adafruit

Edwin Hwu12:41 PM

https://www.piezodrive.com/modules/pdu100-micro-piezo-driver/

PIEZODRIVE

PDu100 Micro Piezo Driver | PiezoDrive

The system block diagram is illustrated in Figure 2. A boost converter generates a high-voltage rail to supply a pair of complementary amplifiers. A single output can be used to drive a unipolar load up to +100 V or both amplifiers can be used to produce +/-100 V.

Read this on PiezoDrive

Prof. Jim Brenner12:41 PM
The nanopositioning system I have is a cobbling of a lot of used equipment I bought off of EBay: a Zygo laser and controller; a ThorLabs x-y-z stage, stepper motor controllers to attach to the ThorLabs stage connected to a set of potentiometers (Newport hardware, but easily converted to generic), Newport NewFocus claw grips and piezoelectric Picomotors for the piezoelectric fine motor control. For really large scale work, instead of using the ThorLabs stage, I used the following: Parker/Daedal ViX250IH Electromechanical Positioning Systems Intelligent Digital Servo Drives.

Edwin Hwu12:42 PM
I think the Arduino and boards combination can get you nice control within 200 USD

placethesundontshine12:42 PM
is the rotary unit published? and is backlash not a problem the thread?

Edwin Hwu12:42 PM
@Prof. Jim Brenner super cool! :D

Joachim Fischer12:42 PM
200USD per axis?

Edwin Hwu12:43 PM
@placethesundontshine not yet... :(

polyfractal12:43 PM
i assume any inertial piezo motor controller would work, right? As long as the pzt voltage aligns with the controller and emits the right waveform? The Thorlabs k-cube inertial controllers are like $800... not cheap, but not 15k :)

Edwin Hwu12:44 PM
200 USD 3 axes....the PiezoDrive board costs 1XX USD, DAC 18 USD, Arduino XXUSD

Prof. Jim Brenner12:45 PM
I actually like yours a lot better @Edwin Hwu. It is far cheaper. At the time that I started this, I was good at making, but not a motor control expert. This project was my introduction to the field. The Picomotors are quite nice hardware, but https://www.piezodrive.com/modules/pdu100-micro-piezo-driver/ is a much better approach. At the time, I had no plans on anyone else using what I built except me.

Hash12:45 PM
Nice, do you machine any of your parts in your lab or send them out to be made?

Edwin Hwu12:45 PM

Edwin Hwu12:46 PM
@Hash my institute in Taiwan has super nice workshop with EDM, machine center....

Edwin Hwu12:46 PM

mh-nexus12:47 PM
@Dan Maloney: when I scroll up half a message (from the last ones) every second or so the chat scrolls down automatically. Is there a way to disable this behavior?

John12:47 PM
Would a stepping piezo motor be easier controller-wise, not needing high voltage driver and allowing greater range of motion?

Edwin Hwu12:47 PM
PiezoDrive can replace my previous hv amplifier....100b has two channels

Prof. Jim Brenner12:47 PM
One of the goals of my textbook is to come up with ways to teach making, especially the projects, in a way that makes it possible for nanotech people like us to build our own equipment. If one of my two AFM's die, I want to be able to build the replacement. The same goes for a lot of my other equipment. For Florida Tech's nanotech minor, we really got a lot more job offers for our students when we had a making course to the materials characterization, the synthesis, and the nanotech lecture.

Edwin Hwu12:48 PM
@John yeah...if you don't go Z direction...30 to 50V is enough

Prof. Jim Brenner12:48 PM
$80 for the piezo driver - Wow! At that price, you could seriously build your own AFM. Even a teaching grade AFM is $38 K.

Dan Maloney12:48 PM
@mh-nexus - Sadly, no. But I will have a transcript ready soon after the chat, so you can refer back to anything you've missed

John12:48 PM
@Edwin Hwu what's the limit on range of motion in x-y?

Edwin Hwu12:49 PM
@Prof. Jim Brenner one company licensed my patents...they sell AFM for 3k USD ;)

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