I updated the design requirements for the Stewart platform.  I weighed the unloaded "dirty" SOS that was sitting on the workbench in the control room; its mass is 11 kg.  Steve suggested that the OSEMs (not installed on this model) would add another 0.5 kg.  From the specs in the final SOS design document, LIGO-T970135, I added 0.25 kg for the optic itself; I am therefore taking the total payload mass to be 11.75 kg.  (Now, the upper stage of the Stewart platform itself will likely add a nontrivial amount, but I am not worrying about this yet.)

I have e-mailed Janeen Romie to obtain the actual center of mass and principal moments of inertia of the platform.  I also cooked up a simple scheme to measure both quantities, should this information not be available.  It would involve rigidly mounting the dirty SOS to a rigid bar hung from a pivot.  By translating the mount point in two dimensions and measuring the period of the pendulum, I ought to be able to find the center of mass and moments of inertia by multilinear regression.  However, this elaborate scheme is not necessary to just compute some ballpark figures; it could wait until a later stage in the design.  For the time being, I just rescaled the moment of inertia proportional to the increase in mass, such that the torque-to-force ratio is unchanged.

As such, the design requirements are now 

• linear travel: 40 microns peak to peak (based on SOS design requirements in LIGO-T950011)
• angular travel: 3 mrad peak to peak (based on SOS design requirements in LIGO-T950011)
• payload mass: 11.75 kg (measured unloaded mass, plus educated guesses about combined mass of OSEMs and optic)
• payload moment of inertia: 0.0232 kg m^2 (wild guess)
• bandwidth: 500 Hz (suggestion of Rana and Koji: ~kHz)

From these assumptions, the revised actuator requirements and dimensions are:

• peak actuator force: 2.04 kN
• minimum radius of top platform: 15 cm
• minimum radius of bottom platform: 30 cm
• minimum height: 26 cm

See the attached PDF document.

It appears that the actuator that I had originally nominated, PI's model P-225.80, would very nearly meet the actuator force requirement.  Steve also pointed out the following single-axis shakers that are already in use in the 40m:

• Brüel & Kjær type 4809
• Brüel & Kjær type 4810

I want to find out if either of these would meet the present need, but I'm waiting on a response from the manufacturer to get access to the data sheets.