Cross-section
Spring-steel shell (teal) snaps over-center inside a rigid skeleton with hard stops. Support pin below, retention finger above — force closure around the part.
Technology
One mechanical primitive — the bistable cell — snaps between stable states, locks on its own geometry, and holds at zero power. Array it, address it in software, and a flat bed becomes the fixture for any part.
How it works
The bistable cell.
Rigid skeleton, hard stops
A spring-steel bistable shell snaps over-center between two stable states. Service loads react through the hard stops — never through the flexure — so the cell carries real load without creeping.
Zero power to hold
Once snapped, the geometry itself holds the locked position. No current, no compressed air, no heat while holding. Power is only spent to change state, not to maintain it.
Force closure
Support pins below and retention fingers above close the loop around the part: it cannot lift or slide. No motors per pin, no printed hinges — one mechanical primitive does the work.
Sealed & durable
Every moving joint is a silicone-overmolded flexure forming a sealed skin, targeting a million-cycle fatigue class. (A design target Phase I is built to measure.)
Why the physics is ready
Integration risk, not physics risk.
The inverse design of shape-morphing cell arrays was solved at thousands of cells in the 2026 literature. We proved the addressable-cell design DNA with Nanoshape 1, our shape display. What remains is engineering the primitive into a manufacturable bed — and measuring it honestly.
What we hold ourselves to
The numbers Phase I proves.
Hold stiffness under load
How much position error appears under probe contact at the locked state — the number that decides whether the platform can replace a machined fixture.
Zero-power hold force
The retention force the over-center geometry sustains with no input power, across the working envelope.
Fatigue life
Cycle count to failure of the overmolded flexures — the gate between a lab demo and a production bed.
Sim-to-hardware match
How closely the inverse-designed cell array behaves like the simulation that specified it. Close the loop and the platform scales.
All product performance claims are design targets until Phase I data. If the cell can't hit them, Phase I says so cheaply — that discipline is the company.
Where this is heading
From one cell to the bed.
The same primitive scales from inspection fixtures to power-off-safe grippers to aerospace deployment mechanisms. See the plan from instrumented cell to production platform.