Ultra-Thin Flexure Actuators with Printed Circuits!
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- Опубликовано: 14 июл 2024
- Integrating a Flexure Bearing into a PCB Actuator! PCBs manufactued at PCBWay - www.pcbway.com
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00:00 Introduction
00:21 The Idea
01:31 Flexure Testing
03:55 Applications
06:39 Conclusion
Music:
Deep Space Samurai - Forever Sunset
Tickle - Josef Falkenskold
Blue Texas - Rockin' For Decades
Hide and Sneak - The Fly Guy Five
Humbot - Wave Saver 
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man, pcbway's manufacturing engineers must have a stroke every time you send them an order ;P
haha they love my work i promise but I cannot imagine them hand mounting all those stiffeners
I think they like the out of routine projects.
@@CarlBugeja Bingo
@@PCBWaySuch a great company
id love too see what the engineers actually need to do to get it right
Please try to build a Braile cell, that is a perfect project, it requires miniature actuators. I worked in a project like this for blind people, and the braile cell technology was too expensive, it was a German technology using high voltage, but if you manage to make it work for active braile cell, that will change the life for many people. The prototype we made was like a cellphone using this active braile cells. Great work by the way!!
He tried to make a digital display earlier and it didn't work.
Do it do it
@@06howea1 yes
We would love to provide necessary financial support.
What if you flipped the concept around? Integrate the PCB coil into the movable part and move the permanent magnet to the underlying substrate. That way the flexure doesn’t have to support the weight of the magnet or keep it from flying away.
Alternatively, perhaps try adding some iron to the movable part and have the flexure provide a restoring force to spring back from the underlying PCB coil when turned off.
In any case, I think the permanent magnets are the most troublesome component of these assemblies.
Super cool! Spiral flexures are a fun rabbit hole to fall down, although not without their quirks (as you discovered heh). Neat stuff!
caught you here
I think you can use the actuation as a means of switching between bistable configurations. Right now the motion is linear and is dependent on the flexibility of the pcb
Excellent idea! There are some interesting bistable mechanisms that use materials that aren't normally considered flexible. If the range of motion is entirely within the elastic range of the stiff material, then the device can last millions of cycles.
I don't know why but I can see this being a super futuristic button. A system that pops it out then you can press it like a button.
Say you want to turn on a light. It doesn't pop the button out untill it's pluged it. Once plugged in you can push it and the magnetic field can be used to register a button press.
I wonder if you could also use it as a n analog button.
PCBWay and Altium are single handedly carrying this man's career
I was blind by accident but I got my sight back and one of the many things I missed while being blind was the internet. Make a screen with a density close to 600x400 coils in this technology so that you can touch it and feel the contours of the "displayed" image. It would make life easier for the blind 😉
The very best application of this tech is Braille display for blind people.
You'd deserve prize for that.
1:06 the fact that we live in a time where you cna design this at home and order it to be delivered to your doorstep is amazing.
Fascinating exploration of thin actuators. Im impressed you can get those designs mfg so completely at pcbway.
Great work, Carl! I love this so much. The triple-flap designs are so incredibly well designed and satisfying to watch 😍
caught you here
6:41 This is exactly how DLP projectors work! Thanks for this video. I love compliant mechanisms!.
KEEP MAKING STUFF!
Yours are some of the most unique and interesting applications for PCB design I've ever seen. I love every design, and learn a TON in the process of watching. Good stuff.
As someone who loves tech but is not an engineer it is a real pleasure to see a good engineer do a research project like this. Thanks, I really enjoyed it.
Good job, Carl!
Very cool! I've had a breakthrough on something I believe it's huge, and that's almost what I needed! May find a way to use your version for the testing phase!
Thanks! You can send me an email for more info
Great work Carl !!
Very informative video as always 👍👍
Dude you might have got the start of a cool keyboard there:
To mitigate the interactions between adjacent magbets try putting the magnets with opposing poles next one another (Nup, Ndow).
Then build a keyboard array, if you keep the magnets up with a constant coil voltage you can then monitor the change in the coil current when a magnet is pressed, boom you got a frictionless keyboard.
Carl, you are interested in a very interesting private field.
As an engineer, I love following your work.
I have two suggestions.
- Play with frequency values.
- Continue the winding in more than one layer while placing the coil on the pcb. For example, let's say that all 8 layers are coiled. I think this will reduce the overheating problem a bit.
You could fix the magnet and make the coil out of flexible pcb so it moves instead of the weight of the magnet
Welcome to the Laminatrix! 😆
Nice work dude, that double-sided gatefold design you've figured out is a bit special. I'm visibly impressed.
This is very impressive Engineering work. Well done!
I love your preservation! Nice work!
I was already subscribed to you. But this did get me to look at your channel again so whatever you did you did it right!
i can't find any word to describe ur work evrytime u amaze us by what u do .... keep up your projects very amazing and not boring
Braille display immediately came to mind.
This would be really cool for something like a vr sleeve around your arms like if something touches it in game to give you some pressure in that area
This man is singlehandedly inventing new devices
Wow, your creativity knows no bounds! Thanks for the shoutout!
This has no relevance to my life but I have been watching every video with great interest.
Wow, you are genius! And you have improved your pronunciation since last video!
flip dot or maybe even a split flap display with your unique brand of genius
could be absolutely gamechanging
i know the split flap display is a far fetch but a flipdot display should be possible
definitely a challenge but i think very doable
The G in Bugeja stands for Genius. Your videos are jawdropping every time.
Mad another video, can’t get enough my dude👌🏽👌🏽👌🏽
So many ideas where you can use this to, thank you very interesting and out of the box
I am watching your progress and mannn it's so nice to see every time you upload
Ideas:
1. self-moving popup books or christmas cards
2. a USB interface that locks when something is written
This is so cool! I just got a power core 3d printer EDM cutter I wanted to dive down this flexure hole too!
Damn, very kewl, while watching the vid I realised you could use these actuators for some sort of Brail Device...
All the best
One more function is to have multiple units on a belt and give several msg by pulsing against the skin, also for deaf people
The flap thing is basically how DLP works, except it's electrostatic and tiny (MEMS).
Electrostatic might make sense here too with a big boost converter
Very neat! I wonder if this could be applied to a scrolling braile display or similar.
You could pull a "magic 8 ball" and enclose the display in a thin container of very opaque liquid, then all the actuators have to do is press themselves against the glass to create a high contrast mechanical display.
Awesome. Diaphragm pumps is what I see a purpose for.
Love your videos! It'd be cool to see you make a "proper" PCB speaker with these boards
This could probably make a great braille display for people with visual impairments. Currently the commercial braille displays you can buy cost more than $100 per character.
Yes build larger ones! Imagine flexures used as engine pistons?
Always impressed by the way you tend to find solutions for every problem! Also would it be ok if I ask about any recommendation for books or resources for learning detailed knowledge about electronics? Great Content as always!
If you used all electromagnets instead of permanent magnets you'd destroy the circuits a lot less since they'd only interact with each other when on.
Also, I believe this technology (with refinement) has applications in biological valve replacement.
Out of curiosity, could you create a flexible tube that would contract in a wave sequence to pump fluids?
i think your galvanometer idea would've benefited from a more traditional cross-gimballing situation (think 2 thin tabs between halfcircles flexing around X, then a circle, then 2 thin tabs in Y) instead of a linearly expanding spring. or do the same trick as most directional pads on controllers and just put a bump in the middle under it to force it being tilted.
It is similar technology used in Mobile phone Camera module.
You can search VCM which drives Lens to certain postion for autofocus function.
you are a genius
Amazing work as always, so impressive! Maybe to solve the magnet problem you could oppose two coils? (So no magnets would be needed)
I like the idea of cheap, "haptic" button pads for electronics projects. Buttons that push back just ever so slightly. Like navigating a menu, the button could "push back" when you reach the end of the list.
You also could use them for input. Make them spring loaded, build like the flaps and as you push, read the output.
this would be perfect for a bass driver in a pair of headphones, like how the skull candy crushers work.
Carl your unique my friend.. 👍🇮🇪
The PCB strength is not as good as metal, but actually you show quite good results.
Pros of flexures: Frictionless guiding, quite good on spring linearity for controlling.
Cons of flexures: Deflection of the beams usually about 1/10 of the length to prevent yield, so the moving distance will be limited.
He is mastering the micro robotics.
use it for precision lens focus
Instead of a spiral use something between a J and a U with longer to the outside ring radiating inward. Or even a W where the middle hump is not connected to the outer ring. The shorter length is glued to the magnet. So say you had 8 segments radiating to the center ... you would have 8 glue points. This would allow the flexure to be below the magnet and would constrain it more centrally and have a more consistent level and minimize the size further. Or if you bent on a spiral make entirely underneath the magnet and just confine the center. Basically invert what you have in the thumb nail ... instead of the 4 points connected to an outer ring, bring them all underneath and to the center.
In my basic understanding of magnets and circuits, I feel like you should see a change in voltage as pressure is applied to a flexed pad. If I am right, and the sensitivity of what you are using to read the voltage is refined sufficiently, then this could have applications as a minute load cell.
Like low pressure environments / suction sensors or powder fill machines in pharma manufacturing.
Maybe you could make a very small diaphragm pump?
Next time instead of wasting area and give the project dept with printed plastic, use a second pcb with just a hole and a coil around it. Solder it on the “base” pcb, and no plastic needed, a second or even a tirth coil could be added, improving your design. Making optimal use of all space while maintaining a housing.
6:48 would be really cool for big art installations
Bro will definitely be an inventor in the near future.
That actuators would work nicely as braille "display". I can imagine small device with camera, and OCR that translates what you pointing at
High acceleration, low resonance frequency mini haptic actuators are hard to find right now. I work with them every day and your design is atypical with the coil under the magnet and not around it. Most devices use the Lorentz force for a constant force regardless of the magnet displacement. The suspension is the hardest part to get right, the second hardest is the magnetic circuit, good luck !
This could work for that tactile guide for the visually impared that 'Stuff Made Here' made. I think the video is called "See in complete darkness with touch"
If you had a system of flextures that you glue to a moving piece, you could have a bistable actuator. You'd just need the flextures to attach to something that compresses them slightly from their rest position, so that deflected in or out is stable, but in the middle is not. I need a thing in my life that indicates whether the current time is inside a specific period, but it needs to consume essentially no power most of the time. I could use a bistable version of this to shift an indicator pin up and down, so it's either sticking out or hidden. You could use a series of this indicator to create a progress "bar" or a binary readout, but simple state indicators like "is it between 3 and 7pm on a weekday" or "is my server online".
If you could detect the flexture being pushed to the other stable state, then this could even be interactive, maybe a minimalist work timer where you push the pin in to start the timer and it pops back up at the end. This could be handled in a lot of ways, detecting it through the coil would just be cool.
Built with precision positioning rather than force and travel in mind this could still be very useful. Maybe for enhancing laser distance measurement and so on.
I love this guy's broken ass english accent " we kut put a howl in de coyle mekanism"
And also love how all of his videos start with interesting ideas and end with really dissapointing results
It would be more beneficial for the future if you work on generating electricity with simple oscillation.
Interesting buttons.. I think they can have great application in gamepads. giving gamer feedback on button press, and heating ist and issue because will be quite short period of usage.
If the mechanical bit you are moving can be made to be bistable, i.e. latch into one of two positions, you would only need to power the actuator in either polarity to switch it. A polarized screen covering the visible display in combination of a polarized reflective coating on the articulated element might result in the element being visible in one position and invisible in the other. A variation of the flip dot display where the moving element might not need to actually move very much at all.
its like a weird solenoid. kinda cool.
So cool!
I'm wondering if you could replace the magnet for another coil in order to make it even simpler to manufacture...
Or if it'd get far too hot.
It would allow it to get thinner and lighter, which would make it worthless for haptical feedback, but better for visual applications, I think.
Great work man, IF you can 'miniaturize' it to the point of 0,6mm magnet, you can do a suitable "braile e-reader"
If using smaller weaker magnets allows you to make a smaller actuator, the blind are a ready market for a Braille actuator. About 10 years ago I corresponded wot someone making a Braille display using solenoids to make pins stick up. A smaller version of this using this technology would use less current and cost a lot less to build.
Just thinking, multilayer actuator driving plastic pins might reduce the magnetic interference. enough to make a finger-sized Braille display.
Maybe you could use the flexures as a micropositioner for an STM.
This project makes me think that you could use a bunch of these flexible actuators like mechanical leaves like when blown upon by wind, they binder moving back and forth they could create a current that could be stored in a battery Bank giving you more power conversion then a fan style wind turbine.. or you could make each of these into a little fan that could generate current financial wind coming across them.. namaste..
Recommend you to disassemble a couple of iPhone's taptic engines to give you some inspiration :) Keep it up!
Please look up Dr. Tass vibrating gloves for Parkinson's! This is exactly the mechanism needed to apply 250 Hz to the finger tips.
If they can be used as powerful speakers, it would be insanely 👍
Wow, your work is amazing. A few months ago I was thinking of doing something similar to design a small clock that tells the time in Braille. Will using this technique be efficient?
If you used your multi-coil pad with a piece of steel instead of a magnet, then you could use the flex unit as a sensor that would proportionally couple the center driven coil to the sensor coils proportionally to the force applied. This would be a good low volume flow sensor.
Would be nice to try the galvo idea again, maybw using 2 actuators at 90°
Have you heard of speaker spiders? They exist to hold the voicecoil centered throughout the whole excursion, much like what you want to do with the magnets here.
1 inch punch comes to mind wen I passed by this video again wonder if even if it only a one time use to hunt some one
What about a bistable mechanism? So when force is applied it'll naturally pop into the new stable position instead of wobbling as much.
I think your laser tilt flexure suffered from sheer force, sliding the magnet without deflection. This seems likely due to your coils being polarized through the thin part of the board.
If you had the four coils aim radially you might get a better response.
How I would approach this is I would run a supply from the outside of the board along one of the 4 radial axis (x+, x-, y+, y-), one for each coil. On either side of these lines have vias, one for each coil. Connect the supply line to the most central via on a selected rotation (cw/ccw). Run on the under side a circular trace to the next most central via along the longer path (can't go through our supply line). On the top side run a trace back towards the first via but then skip to the second most central via to start the second coil.
Not much area in the coil but the change of axis and many more coils could compensate.
How about filling the housing with oil, putting the assembly in a waterproof flexible bladder and using this actuator as a way of generating pressure waves underwater for communication.
What about using an opposing coil instead of the magnet? Would solve the actuaors sticking to its neighbours problem
Make a VR suit with them so that we feel stuff hitting us or someone grabbing us.
0:52 at least 4 of these flexure bearing are just Sharingan XD
Carl. I have a challenge for you. To print a entire RC plane. No wires, no parts to add, only glue, and plugs you can solder on to add chips and circuits you find on the market.
This feels like its all culminating into a DLP chip
where are you? miss you man
I want to use this system to move the wing instead of the servo motor for my small plane. Thank you for your help. Or make a video of it as an idea. thank you please!!!.❤🙏