Robotic claw designs impressed the 2- and 3-finger grippers which are so in style with customers of collaborative robots. The claw-like design precept has additionally impressed quite a lot of delicate gripper designs.
We’ll take a look at particular examples of those grippers in motion beneath, however first let’s briefly discover the variations between robotic claws and mechanical claws.
How does a mechanical claw work?
Mechanical claws are sometimes used for gripping/clamping gadgets in manufacturing environments. The 2 most typical varieties of claws and clamps used are mechanical and hydraulic. Hydraulic clamping/gripping techniques are finest suited to excessive quantity purposes and to purposes the place important tolerances should be maintained. Utilizing electrical pumps and digital strain switches, hydraulic claws present round 1% accuracy in clamping power.
Mechanical clamping and claw techniques are an excellent match for small manufacturing batches and in conditions the place extensive tolerances are acceptable. Mechanical techniques are normally adjusted manually utilizing a wrench, which produces round 10% accuracy in clamping power. Cheaper than their hydraulic counterparts, but in addition extra time consuming to function, mechanical claws and clamps are generally utilized in excessive manufacturing environments reminiscent of throughout excessive temperature operations, the place hydraulic techniques wouldn’t be secure to make use of.
Mechanical claws use varied strategies to shut their pincers. For instance, in some designs when a piston within the center is lifted, the pincers shut. In different mechanical claw designs, an electromagnet is used to carry the pincers collectively. The precept is at all times the identical, nevertheless with the gripper utilizing jaws to know an object.
There are a lot of claw-like finish effectors discovered on collaborative robots, from delicate grippers to 2- and 3-finger grippers. These ‘robotic claws’ present ranges of intelligence and autonomy which are manner past the capabilities of their mechanical counterparts. For instance, a robotic claw (or a robotic clamp) can present helpful suggestions to your cobot and PLC. This information can then be used to finetune your manufacturing processes. Cobot grippers are additionally smaller and extra exact than mechanical claws.
Let’s check out among the claw-like and claw-inspired grippers obtainable by means of UR+,a worldwide ecosystem of parts, software program, and software kits which have been validated and licensed to be mechanically, electrically, and digitally appropriate with cobots from Common Robots.
Cobots with robotic claws
Parallel grippers (generally known as 2-finger, or 2-jaw grippers) contain two pincers closing parallel to the workpiece with the intention to obtain grip. From this easy claw-like design, ingenious engineers have developed a variety of versatile gripper applied sciences which have discovered makes use of in manufacturing purposes from materials dealing with and meeting by means of to packaging & palletizing. Parallel grippers are both electrical, pneumatic or hydraulic. One limitation of parallel grippers is that they’ll solely accomplish a pinch-type grasp, which does restrict their versatility. Adaptive grippers carry new ranges of performance to parallel gripper design. Adaptive grippers are capable of adapt themselves to completely different product shapes with out having to be reprogrammed each time.
Gimatic’s KIT-UR-G, for instance, is an electrical, 2-finger parallel gripper that may be immediately linked to your UR cobot’s wrist. Suitable with UR3 by means of UR10e cobots, this gripper is used for materials dealing with, meeting and machine tending purposes.
