Pneumatic and hydraulic grippers are amongst the preferred gripper sorts (together with servo-electric). If you are questioning whether or not pneumatic or hydraulic grippers are more likely to be one of the best match in your utility, this text is for you as we examine and distinction the design, efficiency and usefulness of hydraulic and pneumatic grippers.
Spoiler: As showdowns go, this one is simple to name. We’ll quickly uncover that for collaborative robotic purposes, there is no such thing as a critical competitors between the 2: pneumatic grippers are the best selection in your cobot-powered purposes.
Let’s discover out why…
What is a hydraulic gripper?
Hydraulic grippers are heavy-duty grippers that apply the kind of forces required to deal with heavy (often >50kg, 110.23 lb) objects.
How does a hydraulic gripper work?
Hydraulic grippers use pressurized fluids to maneuver a piston. When the piston strikes, it transfers this pressure to the claw, opening and shutting it.
What is a pneumatic gripper? How does a pneumatic gripper work?
Pneumatic grippers use stress from a compressed air provide system to provide the ability required to maneuver an interior piston, thereby opening and shutting the pneumatic gripper fingers (or ‘jaws’). Pneumatic gripper mechanisms comprise no motors or gears, which makes it simple to translate the ability of a piston/cylinder system right into a gripping pressure.
Since nearly all of manufacturing services have already got entry to compressed air, deploying pneumatic grippers is simple and cost-effective. One of the principle advantages of pneumatic grippers is that they supply a excessive quantity of gripping pressure in a small, mild and low-cost package deal. For manufacturing services the place area is at a premium, pneumatic grippers are a cost-effective and ergonomic selection. They are additionally fairly simple to keep up –after getting your pneumatic gripper working, it will probably present thousands and thousands of cycles with out requiring upkeep.
What is the distinction between pneumatic and hydraulic grippers?
One of the first the explanation why hydraulic grippers are not often, if ever, utilized in collaborative automation is as a result of the standard payloads do not match. For causes of security, ease of deployment, value, mobility and footprint, cobots are designed for lower-than-hydraulic payloads of as much as round 16kg (35.3 lbs). Therefore, for nearly each conceivable cobot-powered utility, utilizing a hydraulic gripper can be costly overkill.
If you’ll want to elevate weights of 500kg (1102.31lb), for instance, a typical industrial robotic with a hydraulic gripper and fencing could be your best option. But for Universal Robots clients, pneumatics provide completely sufficient vitality density for purposes resembling meeting, materials dealing with and machine tending.
Additionally, since hydraulic grippers comprise pistons and oiled elements, they’re much higher-maintenance than their servo-electric and pneumatic counterparts. Hydraulic gripper upkeep can be advanced and may require expert technicians to keep up the oil, pump and reservoir. This highlights one other essential cause why pneumatic grippers are usually most popular over hydraulic grippers for collaborative purposes: cobots are designed for simple operation by non-expert end-users, so including a fancy hydraulic gripping system to a cobot will undermine the general system’s ease of use.
Since they depend on air relatively than fluids, pneumatic robotic grippers will be deployed in clear room environments. By comparability, hydraulic robotic grippers are too messy –particularly once they fail and leak hydraulic fluid into your work cell.
Furthermore, when it comes to value, hydraulic grippers are rather more costly than their pneumatic counterparts. If you’re interested in cobots partially due to their low value in comparison with conventional automation, then it would not make loads of sense to deploy a hydraulic gripper that might simply value greater than the cobot itself.
Finally, if accuracy is essential to your collaborative utility, then remember the fact that pneumatic gripping programs present larger accuracy than their hydraulic counterparts. Your gripper’s URCap software program and straightforward integration with Universal Robots cobot vary ensures a relentless movement of information that can be utilized to tweak your purposes and processes, cut back downtime and enhance productiveness.
URCaps are particular software program applications designed to make sure clean programming and management of UR licensed end-effectors and parts. UR+ is a world ecosystem of parts, software program, and utility kits which have been validated and licensed to be mechanically, electrically and digitally suitable with cobots from Universal Robots. UR+ hosts a wide array of pneumatic grippers from you to select from.
Pneumatic grippers simply win this robotic gripper showdown, however they’ve their very own limitations. For instance, as a result of they depend on pressurized air movement, pressure management shouldn’t be as exact as that supplied by electrical grippers. Providing a fragile grip may also be a problem for pneumatic programs because it’s arduous to regulate the gripper at very low pressures. If an exterior air provide is required, this may add further value to your deployment. And whereas pneumatic grippers are appropriate for a lot of clear room purposes, in the event that they fail, they’ll contaminate the air contained in the work cell. For these causes, some producers desire to make use of electrical grippers for his or her materials dealing with wants.
UR+ is a one-stop-shop for pneumatic robotic grippers
Let’s check out a few of pneumatic robotic gripper choices accessible by UR+
The GRIPKIT-P Series from Weiss Robotics is a pneumatic gripper and dealing with system for Universal Robots. The GRIPKIT-P system incorporates all the things finish customers have to arrange materials dealing with, meeting and machine tending duties inside minutes. If you want excessive dynamics and gripping pressure with compact dimensions, GRIPKIT-P pneumatic grippers (in parallel or centric design) are preferrred.