Delta Platform for Enhanced Scanning & Vibration Mitigation

Technology Licensing Opportunity - This is not a procurement. 

Delta Platform for Enhanced Scanning & Vibration Mitigation

Augmented with a Unique Mechanism Enabling Platform Degree of Freedoms

Opportunity:   Idaho National Laboratory (INL), managed and operated by Battelle Energy Alliance, LLC (BEA), is offering the opportunity to enter into a license and/or collaborative research agreement to commercialize this Delta Platform technology for Enhanced Scanning and Vibration Mitigation.

Background:   Current motion platforms have a problem activating degrees of freedom without restricting movement or occupying the workspace above the platform. INL had several applications where it would be desirable to actuate degrees of freedom from the platform without having to account for excess weight on the platform due to an added actuator or the spatial interference and routing issues generated by conventional mechanical, electrical or hydraulic lines methods to actuate such actuators. These devices have a very large footprint and utilize underwater motors and complex, cumbersome, and rigid mechanics which are difficult to interface with and maintain.

Description:    Researchers at INL have developed a device that enables a typical linear delta platform with additional degrees of freedom on the platform activated using a novel mechanism. For each added platform degree of freedom, a rotationally enabled shaft, parallel to the delta platform’s linear actuators, is run. This then converts that rotational motion to rotational motion of another shaft traversing from the carriage to the platform, and then making that motion available to operate a mechanism. It essentially moves with the linear actuator carriages and in concert with the parallel linkages. Thus, it does not restrict the displacement capabilities of the platform or interfere with the workspace above the platform.

Applications:   Any translation/orientation applications (e.g. material handling, scanning, additive manufacturing, automated welding, pick and place, etc.), which employ linear and/or rotational delta platforms can benefit from this mechanism. The INL applications which this system was devised includes the scanning of a submerged radiological sample and the embedment of material in a granular medium via vibrational inputs. The mechanism allows the scanning system to translate the entire 15-feet distance below the water surface necessary to protect the user from radiation exposure while still having readily available degrees of freedom at its platform throughout the travel. The mechanism allows material embedment (e.g. a fiber optic line) in medium (e.g. concrete, sand, etc.) because it can actuate a vibrating degree of freedom on the platform while positioning the material embedment head in the medium. The vibration mode may also be of use to additive manufacturing linear delta systems that already have to account for the weight and spatial constraints associated with the extrusion head.

Advantages:    Benefits include increased workspaces, reduced load path inertia, removal of driving motors from hazards near platform, and vibration mitigation. It utilizes more enabled motors and components enabled with applying high speed, high precision, and high force. It can retain a relative vibrational displacement.

Impact:            The device allows a delta system to achieve the same function as if an actuator(s) were attached to the platform but with smaller motors and less spatial restrictions. Such conditions improve the cost and space efficiency of task execution (e.g. smaller motors cost less and larger workspace to device size allows more compact, less expensive, versions of a system to be deployed with similar product outcomes).

Development:The device has been modeled and proof of concept has been completed.

IP Status:        US Patent Application 16/191,047, “Linear Delta Systems With Additional Degrees of Freedom and Related Methods.”

INL is seeking to license the above intellectual property to a company with a demonstrated ability to bring such inventions to the market. Exclusive rights in defined fields of use may be available.

Please visit Technology Deployment’s website at https://inl.gov/inl-initiatives/technology-deployment for more information on working with INL and the industrial partnering and technology transfer process.

Companies interested in learning more about this licensing opportunity should contact Kala Majeti at suryakala.majeti@inl.gov.