Magnetic Grippers For Manufacturers

There are many doable functions for robots within the manufacturing course of, with probably the most frequent makes use of being present in machine tending, meeting, high quality inspection, packaging and palletizing functions. Robotic arms are able to performing repetitive duties precisely and with out taking a break, outperforming human staff when it comes to reliability and availability. A robotic arm gripper mechanism can exchange many features of the human hand.

End-effector grippers on a robotic arm

Let’s take a second to evaluate the items of a robotic arm. Much like a human arm, a robotic arm has joints that mimic an elbow, wrist, and hand. 

The ‘gripper’ corresponds to the human hand and is also referred to as a robotic end-effector or manipulator. Robotics corporations have produced an array of grippers to fulfill the wants of producers, with magnetic robotic grippers being among the many hottest.

What is a magnetic gripper and the way is it used?

A magnetic gripper presents a method to deal with the smallest of workpieces. Magnetic grippers use a magnetized floor to seize metallic gadgets. This sort of gripper would not often incorporate fingers or jaws, as an alternative counting on clean magnetic surfaces for dealing with. Magnetic grippers are widespread in industries the place sheet metallic and automotive elements are being moved alongside an meeting line.  

While different varieties of manipulators depend on compressed air or hydraulics to generate motion and maintain the piece, magnetic grippers don’t. Instead, magnetic grippers use both electromagnets, which require DC energy or everlasting magnets, that are at all times on and don’t require energy to function.   

Although magnetic arm grippers can deal with a variety of potential functions, there are professionals and cons to the sort of industrial gripper.

Pros and cons of utilizing magnetic grippers

As with any tech resolution, there are advantages and disadvantages to picking a magnetic robotic gripper. First, let’s look at the advantages.  This sort of manipulator often presents one floor to seize an object. This mitigates the difficulty of getting robotic fingers which can be too giant or uniform to deal with small and/or irregularly formed items. It additionally has a quick greedy pace. Electromagnets will be turned on or off immediately, enabling simple greedy and dislodging. This sort of gripper additionally requires minimal upkeep, making it aflexible and cost-effective alternative for producers. Unlike vacuum grippers, a magnetic robotic gripper can maintain elements with holes or uncommon grooves. It’s additionally vital to notice that the sort of end-effector is often low-maintenance. 

One of the potential drawbacks of magnetic grippers for manufacturing functions is that items will be simple to dislodge, inflicting elements to slide out of the gripper’s grasp.   

Depending on the energy of the magnetic grip, even small collisions with close by staff or objects may trigger the workpiece to fall from the flat floor.  Additionally, even small quantities of oil on the floor of the gripper scale back the gripper’s means to carry objects.

Further, items can stay magnetized after being dealt with by a magnetic arm gripper, with the outcome that even should you handle to tug the gripper away, the newly magnetized piece could connect itself to a different piece of metallic. Another limitation of magnetic grippers is that they will solely deal with ferromagnetic supplies. 

Integrating UR+ options

At Universal Robots, we design collaborative robots (or ‘cobots’) which can be extremely adaptable to your particular manufacturing and enterprise wants. Alongside our cobots, we created UR+ –the trade’s largest ecosystem of peripherals and Application Kits. UR+ is designed to fulfill your automation necessities by supplying all of the UR+ licensed {hardware} and software program you want to get began in your UR cobot utility rapidly and affordably.

For instance, SMC’s MHM Magnetic Gripper Kit is a system that’s ideally suited to functions that contain dealing with ferromagnetic workpieces, particularly these with irregular surfaces.