Robotic Equipment Spotlight: Grippers

If you need robot tool­ing to pick up, manip­u­late, and place your product/​part, chances are you’re going to use a robot­ic gripper.

Arguably the most com­mon type of end of arm tool­ing (EOAT), robot­ic grip­pers are found in vir­tu­al­ly every indus­try and con­text from food pro­duc­tion and clean­room envi­ron­ments to foundries and dis­tri­b­u­tion centers.

Robot­ic grip­pers come in a vari­ety of types, sizes, and con­fig­u­ra­tions — fric­tion, encom­pass­ing, hydraulic, pneu­mat­ic, elec­tric, mag­net­ic, etc. Here’s a video demon­stra­tion of some of the types of robot­ic grip­pers Robots​.com has inte­grat­ed: Grip­pers.

Robots​.com’ inte­gra­tion team works with each cus­tomer to deter­mine which robot­ic grip­pers is best suit­ed to the appli­ca­tion, work­cell design, and most impor­tant­ly, the part/​product. Some prod­ucts, for exam­ple, will be dam­aged if too much force is applied while oth­ers can han­dle sig­nif­i­cant amounts of force. A num­ber of fac­tors, such as tool­ing cost, force nec­es­sary, part weight, and accel­er­a­tion /​deceleration rates are con­sid­ered when select­ing a robot­ic grip­per solution.

Find out more about the vari­ety of robot­ic grip­pers available…

Fric­tion vs. Encompassing:

Grip­pers can be bro­ken down into two basic cat­e­gories: fric­tion and encompassing.

Fric­tion robot­ic grip­pers hold the part with force alone.

Encom­pass­ing robot­ic grip­pers sur­round the part and do not exert as much force.

Gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, fric­tion grip­pers are a bet­ter match for hard­er mate­ri­als, while encom­pass­ing grip­pers are well-suit­ed for soft­er mate­ri­als. If the part or prod­uct being manip­u­lat­ed is flex­i­ble (bags, for instance) then an encom­pass­ing jaw style is best. Once again, decid­ing between fric­tion and encom­pass­ing styles involves care­ful­ly eval­u­a­tion of the prod­uct and application.

Source of Force:

Robot­ic grip­pers are pow­ered in many dif­fer­ent ways. Cost, space con­straints, part mate­r­i­al and weight are just some of the things that are con­sid­ered when nar­row­ing down the source of your robot­ic grip­per force.

Pneu­mat­ic Grippers

The most pop­u­lar robot­ic grip­per type, pneu­mat­ic grip­pers are com­pact, light­weight, and capa­ble of apply­ing a sig­nif­i­cant amount of force. Com­pressed air is read­i­ly avail­able and pneu­mat­ic grip­pers don’t have the added bulk of motors and gears so they can be incor­po­rat­ed into tight work­cells. Pneu­mat­ic grip­pers are often com­bined with oth­er ele­ments — mag­nets and suc­tion cups for example.

Hydraulic Grip­pers

Need more force? Hydraulic grip­pers are often used when a siz­able amount of force is nec­es­sary. How­ev­er, hydraulic grip­pers can involve more mess with the oil, pump, and reser­voir, etc.

Elec­tric Grippers

Elec­tric grip­pers are becom­ing more pop­u­lar because they are clean­er and eas­i­er to main­tain than hydraulic grip­pers while pro­vid­ing the same amount of force. With help from micro­proces­sors, elec­tric grip­pers are much more adapt­able. Elec­tric grip­pers include motors so they can be larg­er than pneu­mat­ic options.

Grip­per Fin­gers and Jaws:

Robot­ic grip­pers come in many dif­fer­ent designs. The length of the jaws can have an impact on cycle speed and effec­tive­ness. Longer jaws many be nec­es­sary depend­ing on the work­cell and appli­ca­tion (exam­ple: remov­ing a part from an injec­tion mold machine). In addi­tion, grip­pers are com­mon­ly con­struct­ed with two or three fin­gers (actu­a­tors) for grasp­ing an object. Inte­gra­tors con­sid­er the size and con­struc­tion of the part being manip­u­lat­ed to deter­mine how many actu­a­tors are best. 

For more infor­ma­tion about robot­ic grip­pers, con­tact them online or the Robots​.com Sales Depart­ment at 877−762−6881.