The Adjustable X-Mount

In-situ adjustability of stiffness and/or damping properties of an engineering system is an important feature or desired function in many applications. The one of obvious advantages of the X-structure/mechanism method is its adjustability as shown in the last chapter. This adjustability can be realized flexibly in various ways, including change of rod length, change of assembly angle, installment of pre-extension/distance/length/height adjustable mechanisms and so on. The X-cube briefly demonstrated in the last chapter is a good example of such flexible adjustability. This chapter presents a different X-cube design with a different adjustable mechanism of the resulting nonlinear stiffness system. The result of this chapter is actually an early work of those ideas for nonlinear manipulation demonstrated in Chap. 7 .