Design and Manufacture of a Highly Reliable, Miniaturized and Low-Mass Shutter Mechanism

Manhart, M., Zeh, T., Preißler, G., Hurni, A., Peter, G., Walter, I., Helbert, J., Multhaup, K., Hiesinger, H.

Abstract

This paper describes the development, manufacturing and testing of a lightweight shutter mechanism made of titanium for the MERTIS Instrument. MERTIS is a thermal infrared imaging spectrometer onboard ESA's future BepiColombo mission to Mercury. The mechanism is built as a parallelogram arrangement of flexible hinges, actuated by a voice coil. In a first test run, it was shown that the selected EDM processing led to the generation of titanium oxides and an oxygen-enriched surface layer on the substrate (so called α-case layer). In the revised version of the shutter, it was possible to manufacture the complex geometry by micro-milling and an adjacent pickling procedure. The adequacy of this approach was verified by lifetime and vibration testing.