Development and design of an active work piece holder driven by piezo actuators

The use of piezo actuators in machine tools is a current topic. There are many research works which show the advantages of this kind of actuators in various fields around machining. In this paper an active work piece holder is presented, which is designed for reducing the dynamic displacement between the tool and the work piece relatively. The paper shows the design process for the fixture, the finite element analysis of the mechanical parts and the actuators. Also a specially designed power amplifier is presented which fits best to the needs of voltage and frequency range of the active work piece holder. First experimental results are shown.