Roll It Up! a New Design Process for Miniaturized Force/Torque Sensors

Abstract

We present a disruptive manufacturing process for a multiaxial force/torque sensor. The deformation element consists of a hexapod geometry with six sensing elements with a total diameter of 9 mm. The manufacturing process is divided into three steps: (1) Milling a planar arrangement of defor¬mation elements out of a 2 mm thick steel (1.4301) plate, (2) applying strain gauges in half-bridge configuration and (3) rolling the elements to a hexapod structure. The dimensions of the deformation elements are scalable to adjust the size and nominal measurement range of the sensor. The first prototype has a measuring range of 4 N and 66 mNm with a maximal error of 1.16 % and a cross-sensitivity less than 2.76 %.