I am brainstorming for a robotic solution to a particular type of motion for an optical application and would love to hear any suggestions or links to products that may aid in my efforts. Please see my image for context in the upper right corner.
I have an optical assembly that rotates on a disc in a 50 cm radius in the XY plane. It needs to have out of plane motion such that the stage follows a 50 cm radius arc in the XZ plane, and the optical assembly still points at the origin (hence the "tilt" motion (DOF in theta_y)).
I have some obvious ideas such as a simple linkage mechanism and a linear actuator; however the purpose of this brainstorming is to see if there exists some suitable OTS robotics product that can maneuver an optical stage in the required arcing motion independent of some linkage system.
The required DOF would be +-10cm in Z, +X (to position the stage along the arc), and a tilt about Y (theta_y). In the tilt actuators I have seen, they don't have the capability to translate such a large height, and in both directions. Hard to put a number on the weight of the optics, but for the implied footprint in the image, I imagine its on the higher capacity spectrum for suitable robotics. I'm guessing somewhere between 30-50 kg.
I am looking for elegant solutions. Given that some aforementioned linkage system could perform this motion with a single DOF (+-Z), the robotic stage approach would require a fully contained actuator to "compete", and not some composite configuration with many stages which would complicate the system.
Thank you,
EB