Introducing the SmartStage™ Open Frame Positioning Stage, a breakthrough innovation from Dover Motion harnessing over 60 years of unrivaled precision motion design and manufacturing expertise. The SmartStage Open Frame is the latest product in the SmartStage ecosystem of products, where the controller and encoder is physically integrated inside the stage structure. This design offers high performance and reliability with simplified integration via a single cable for power and communications, with no external control electronics needed.
Image Credit: Dover Motion
The SmartStage Open Frame positioning stages are optimized for regular or inverted microscopy applications that require an open aperture. The product line includes multiple sizes to accommodate a variety of payloads, including well plates, multiple slide holders, and incubators for microscopy/imaging applications, in life science, metrology, and related fields. Combined with the physically integrated controller, software, and user-definable motion profiles, this product enables high-throughput, high-quality positioning, to enable economic application of precision imaging technologies and data collection. The SmartStage Open Frame stages provide velocity stability for TDI scanning applications, and fast step and settle motion for field to field imaging, resulting in higher throughput and cost effectiveness for your application.
“The SmartStage ecosystem of products enables rapid breadboarding of instrument designs – while also being suitable for production. The stages combine motion control, drive, and position feedback into one compact package so instrument design teams can focus on bringing their core technology to market.” says Justin Harper, Senior Product Manager at Dover Motion. “This allows OEMs to leverage a common architecture for XY sample positioning and Z focusing stages, while enjoying reduced part count, size, and complexity.”
Extensive additional functionality and options are available leveraging the SmartStage control system. This includes high Resolution Trigger On Position for Image Capture or Laser Synchronization. It also offers coordinated motion with a user defined profile mode (UDP) which allows stages to coordinate motion using auxiliary inputs. These stages can be driven by another axis or external source to follow defined motion curves based off the input.
The SmartStage Open Frame XY is covered by US Patent 10,367,436.