Parallel precision positioning specialist PI (Physik Instrumente) has opened a new building with more production floors, metrology labs and R&D office space at its factory in Karlsruhe, Germany.
Around 4,500 square feet of space is dedicated to the manufacture and testing of heavy-duty, six-axis motion systems capable of moving loads of up to five tonnes with sub-micrometre precision. To verify the accuracy of these high-load precision positioners, special metrology rooms have been built, filled with interferometers and other test equipment.
A lift and rotation platform is used to rotate the six-axis positioner, with its load, through 360 degrees, to verify its performance under the exact mounting conditions of the customer’s site.
Some 50 of PI's hexapods align specialist reflectors in the ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter Array) observatory, the world's most advanced telescope located in Chile. Hexapod precision positioning systems are used in many cutting edge applications around the world, from optics alignment, to medical tumour treatment, from high energy physics to aerospace and semiconductor manufacturing.
