Selection Guide for CEDRAT's APA Actuators

The Amplified Piezo Actuators, APAs, developed by CEDRAT cover an area of performance, in terms of forces and displacements, that is not in the range of direct or bimorph Piezo Actuators. The APA have been designed in order to offer the largest possible stroke while keeping a resonable size and a long lifetime.

Unlike conventional piezoelectric actuators with stroke being only about 0.1% of their length, APAs relies on a piezoelectric stack and on a deformable shell in order to amplify the allowed displacement. The bending behavior of the shelunder piezoelectric actuation results in a continuous stress distribution leading to long lifetimes (up to 10¹⁰ cycles). Furthermore, the symmetric shape of the structure makes the actuator insensitive to twist and bend torques. Amplified ratios of 10 times can be achieved depending on the shape of the shell.

The APA Series comes in ten series by sizes (uXS, XXS, XS, S, SM, M, MML, ML, L and XL). For instance, uXS means "micro-eXtra-Small' and XL means "eXtra Large" actuator. 

To see the datasheets, please click on the APA Model size for more information:

The smallest APA actuator is the APA40uXS. It exhibits 40µm stroke for a dimmension of 4mm only. The biggest one - the APA1000 - has over 1mm stroke. Non-magnetic versions of the APAs are available upon request. APAs also allow for higher displacement by placing the actuators in series.  Additionally, they come in several sizes, ranging from the XS series to XL Series, with XS being the smallest (about 5 mm by 12 mm by 9 mm) and XL being the largest (57 mm by 214 mm by 21 mm).

 

Model Series	APA uXS & APA XXS	APA XS	APA S	APA SM
Blocking Force [N]	2-6	18	40-100	100-200
No-load stroke [um]	40-150	25-80	60-120	40-80
Strain Gauge Opt.		* (except 50XS)	Yes	Yes
Non-Magnetic Opt.		Yes	Yes
High Temp. Option			Yes	Yes
Thermo-Comp Opt.			Yes
Mech Interface Opt	FI-H	FI-H-TH-SI	FI-H-TH-SI	FI-H-TH-SI
Electrical Interface Option	Single Cu wire	Two wires AWG32	Two wires AWG30	Two wires AWG30
Notes	Preliminary Smallest			Stiff series

  

Model Series	APA M	APA MML	APA ML	APA L & APA XL
Blocking Force [N]	18-184	189-250	1400-1900	373-1350
No-load stroke [um]	110-900	280-364	94-130	236-1050
Strain Gauge Opt.	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Non-Magnetic Opt.			Yes	Yes (only L)
High Temp. Option		Yes	Yes	Yes (only L)
Thermo-Comp Opt.			Yes
Mech Interface Opt	FI-H-TH-SI	FI-H-SI	FI-H-TH-FF-SI	FI-H-TH-SI
Electrical Interface Option	Two wires AWG30	Two wires AWG30	Two wires AWG30	Two wires AWG30
Notes	Medium series	Me