A single arm can push and place. Many of the most useful workflows, though, need two or more manipulators acting together, and because each Kleindiek manipulator is compact, several fit around the same sample.
What a second arm unlocks#
- Hold and cut. One arm grips the object while the other severs a connection or mills a feature.
- Hand-off. Transfer an object from one tip to another to re-orient it or reach a new site.
- Tensile and bending tests. Clamp a nanowire at both ends and pull, while measuring force.
- Assembly. Bridge a wire across electrodes, or stack one object precisely on another.
Why precision matters here#
With two tips converging on one object, every micrometre of drift or backlash is doubled. The closed-loop MM3E lets you define and recall positions for each arm, so a multi-step assembly repeats reliably instead of being re-tuned by hand each time.
How far that goes: at the National University of Singapore, two MM3A-EM arms gripped a single carbon nanotube out of a bundle and bent it through three planes of movement, using a force of several micronewtons, without breaking it.
