3 ms·
Breaking taps has a cool video on how the alignment flexures work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MxH1sfJLBQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MxH1sfJLBQ
by showerst 5y ago
Breaking taps has a cool video on how the alignment flexures work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MxH1sfJLBQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MxH1sfJLBQ
- shrike 5y agoFlexures are generally interesting, these flexures are amazing. The video references the public documentation @ https://www.esmats.eu/amspapers/pastpapers/pdfs/2006/warden.pdf https://www.esmats.eu/amspapers/pastpapers/pdfs/2006/warden..... They weigh 665 grams (1.47lbs), have a range of 21mm (.826 inches) and a 7.7 nanometre (0.00000030315 inch) step. They work at temperatures down to -253C (-423.6F). The cryocooler and these flexures have me seriously considering going back to school for a mechanical engineering/materials science degree.
- dekhn 5y agoIn short, projects like this are an example of "let's take everything humanity has learned over the past 100,000 years and apply it to make a production scientific instrument that is deployed without any physical human intervention far from earth and operates for 20 years". Day to day, my software work looks outright amateurish compared to that. However, the process to develop these sorts of instruments is extremely boring (mostly process following).