3014 Development of Miniature Electric Gripper Using Movable Pulleys
Details
In automated manufacturing factory, grippers which pick and place workpieces are installed on robots as endeffectors. Conventionally, pneumatic cylinders are mainly used for the grippers. However, there are many problems that the grippers are inefficient in terms of energy and need incidental equipments such as compressors and pipes. For these reasons, electrically moved grippers are expected. These days, few electric grippers exist. But these grippers are larger and heavier than the pneumatic. This reason is that a mechanism of increasing force and changing rotary motion to liner motion is necessary so that an electric motor may be used as the actuator of the electric gripper. Therefore, we try to use movable pulleys to miniaturize the electric gripper. This mechanism can increase force and change rotary motion to liner motion by one mechanism. From this point, the electric gripper may be miniaturized with this mechanism. It is shown in experiments that movable pulleys can increase the force and change the motion.
