Tilt Stages, Tip-Tilt Stages, Motorized and Piezo

High Performance and High-Speed Tilt Stages and Tip-Tilt Platforms for Alignment and Stabilization

PI provides a large selection of high precision and high-speed tilt and tip tilt stages with a variety of different drive concepts. Air bearings tilt stages provide high speed motion, large travel ranges, support high loads, and are completely wear-free and maintenance free. Piezo flexure amplified tilt and tip tilt platforms can be used for fast laser beam steering, image stabilization, and improvement of laser welding applications. Their high resolution down to the nanoradian and fast response in the millisecond range makes them ideal for free space optical communication and error compensation in beam delivery applications, e.g. in the semiconductor industry.

Voice coil tip / tilt platforms provide larger angular travel than piezo flexure units, but at slightly lower resolution.

Applications of PI tilt stages and Z-tip/tilt platforms and goniometric rotation stages are found in alignment, laser beam steering, optics, and wafer test and inspection.

Flexure Guides and Piezo Drives (Small Angles)

Laser Beam Steering and Image Stabilization

The A-523 high performance Z-tip-tilt stage is based on fast linear motors and frictionless air bearing guiding systems. It provides nanometer resolution, high speed, and a high load capacity of 8kg. The A-651 spherical air bearing achieves tip and tilt motion up to +/-45 degrees and 360 degrees rotation around Z. The A-60x add-on stage for rotary stages provides manual tip/tilt motion along with a fine adjustment range X and Y for high precision alignment tasks.

Low Profile

⌀250mm table
8 kg load capacity
5mm Z-stroke, to 2° tip/tilt
10nm/0.06µrad incremental motion
1nm sensor resolution

Details YouTube

The PIglide HB series spherical air bearing enables unique positioning and simulation applications in both research and industrial fields. These bearings provide excellent load capacity and stiffness while allowing three axes of inherently frictionless rotational motion. Commonly used for zero-g satellite research, spherical bearings are also used in systems for precision chip bonding and optical alignment. Extremely rigid spindles can be made using a spherical bearing at each end of the spindle shaft. This arrangement also allows precision alignment of the spindle shaft on the fly by moving one spherical bearing relative to the other.

3 Degrees of Freedom

Ideal for zero gravity simulation
2/3/4/6/8/10/12” sphere diameter
15 to 635kg load
±45 degrees rotation range

Details Article Video

The PIglide MTT series of manual alignment tabletops can manually adjust a payload mounted to a rotary air bearing in four degrees of freedom, allowing alignment of the payload to the bearing’s axis of rotation. Adjustments can be made in two linear orthogonal directions (X and Y) and in two angular directions (tip and tilt). The tabletop surface is made from durable, wear- resistant stainless-steel. This accessory is ideal for metrology, roundness measurement, and part gauging applications.

Add-On For Rotary Stage

Ideal for optics testing
4 degrees of freedom: X, Y, θX, θY
Manual operation
Travel to ±3mm, ±1.25°
3/4/6/8/10” table diameter
Direct mount on A-60x / A-62x

Details

These closed-loop nanopositioning Z and tip-tilt stages provide nanoradian and sub-nanometer resolution with very fast response for high performance alignment, scanning, and steering applications. Based on extremely precise, friction and maintenance-free flexure guides, they are driven by piezoelectric elements and provided with position feedback sensors for high performance motion control.

Parallel Metrology

50, 100, 200µm Z-motion
Up to 4 milliradian Z/tip/tilt
Precision trajectory control
Sub-nanometer resolution
Parallel capacitive metrology

Details

These tip-tilt platforms are designed for laser beam steering, fast scanning, image stabilization or free space optical communication. Bandwidth of more than 1kHz are feasible. In addition to high speed, they also provide very high stability and repeatability down to the nanoradian range. In addition to these standard units, custom tip-tilt mirror platforms for image stabilization in astronomical telescopes are also available from PI.