Electric gripper...

[Kōkaku kidōtai]

Hello everybody,

for "test/marketing" application I'm looking for some cheap electric jaw gripper. Normally I would go with pneumatic, but because we can not use compressor nor have access to pressure installation we need to go with electric  .

I checked some solutions from Schunk but they are rather pricy. I need something really simple (=cheap)  .

Any suggestions ?

[James]

Do you need an actual gripper or would pickup magnets do the job?

Edit: a quick google search for "electric gripper" led me here: http://techno-sommer.com/Gripper_quoteG2i1.htm

[Kōkaku kidōtai]

Thanks for your input.

When you search via Google most of the answers will be Schunk or Sommer, but I'm looking for some other options. Do you know anything from personal experience?

Regards

[TygerDawg]

Unlikely you will find anything that isn't "pricey".  You could design/build your own, but after all the engineering time you'd have to put in to integrate a motor with some sort of force feedback or torque monitoring, speed control, and mechanical elements, you'd be better off buying Commerical Off The Shelf components from somebody who has already done it.

[CharlesM]

I have not used these but it does give you another option

http://www.phdinc.com/Products/Default.aspx?productseries=191

[SkyeFire]

Define "cheap" in this case.  And how big is this gripper?  How does it have to be articulated?

One thing you could do is pick up an extra (smaller) robot servo, rig it to your robot as an external axis, and have it drive (for example) a ball-screw that would draw the "fingers" together to grip the item.  A compatible robot servo isn't cheap, but it'll work with what you have without requiring a bunch of extra drive electronics and torque-monitoring gear.  Depending on your robot, you could even have the gripper close by force sensing (via torque feedback) rather than simply closing to a fixed position.

The end result would look a lot like an automotive-factory servo-gun spot welder, but with the servo driving a gripper rather than a high-force weld gun.  Probably smaller, too.  Plus, if you happen to already have some spare robot servos around for spare parts, you might be able to avoid the biggest part of the materiel cost.