• Flexure design ensures smooth continuous motion.
• Compact design - 62.5mm from the table to the moving deck, and 75mm from the table to the optical axis of the accessories.
• Unlike conventional bearing stages, this flexure stage avoids friction by having no sliding parts.
• The flexure design enhances long-term stability, traditional linear bearings require grease to operate which compromises stability.
• All adjusters tied to a common ground which is decoupled from moving worlds to provide unparalleled stability.

NanoMax Parallel Flexure Stages
The advantages of the patented MAX300 series parallel flexure designs are readily apparent when the stages are implemented in alignment applications requiring sub-micron resolution or better. Typically, with a multi-axis stacked stage, touching one of the two drives that are not referenced to “ground” will result in unwanted motion within the assembly. With each of the drives in a NanoMax™ series stage coupled directly to the base of the stage, these adverse effects are eliminated. The fixed differential drives offer 4mm of coarse travel as well as a 300µm fine travel range with a resolution of 50µm per revolution. The graduations engraved on the coarse and fine travel provide a clear reference point for applications that require absolute positioning.

A wide range of accessories are available to mount items such as microscope objectives, collimation packages, wave guides, optical fiber, and much more. In addition, multiple adapter plates are also available to mount the NanoMax series stages to a wide range of Thorlabs rotation and long travel linear stages (as shown above in the Related Items tab).

Optional Closed Loop Internal Piezoelectric Actuators
The MAX311 and MAX312 feature internal piezoelectric actuators built directly into the body of the stage, providing a 20µm travel range with a positional resolution of 20nm.   Furthermore, the MAX311 features three strain gauge displacement sensors which provide a voltage signal that is linearly proportional to the displacement of the piezoelectric element. This signal is used to compensate for the hysteresis, creep, and thermal drift that is inherent in all piezoelectric elements. If driven by a controller which uses a balanced bridge circuit, the piezoelectric actuator can be controlled in a closed-loop feedback mode that improves the positional resolution from 20nm to 5nm. Hysteresis, mechanical creep, and drift can be monitored and compensated via this sensor. These features, coupled with the BNT001 or MNA601 NanoTrak controllers, create a powerful autoalignment solution for eliminating decreased coupling efficiency due to thermal drift or other external forces.