Development of a Parallel Jaw Gripper with Bidirectional Force Magnification Mechanism(Mechanical Systems)

Abstract

This paper presents a parallel jaw gripper with a force magnification mechanism that can exert a large grasping force of 200N in both the opening and closing directions. We have proposed a combination mechanism of a high-speed driving and force-magnification mechanisms, and developed multifingered hands. The force-magnification mechanisms can maintain a large grasping force wihtout energy consumption. Many parallel jaw grippers are used in factories and they should be energy-saving, which motivated us to develop a parallel jaw gripper with a force magnification mechanism. However, they must exert a grasping force in both the opening and closing directions, whereas the previous force magnification mechanisms can exert a large grasping force only in the closing direction. Therefore we propose a new bidirectional force magnification mechanism. The developed parallel jaw gripper weighs 2kg, and the motion range and speed of its jaws are 100mm and 66mm/s, respectively. The grasping procedure that can exert the maximum grasping force is also discussed. We apply the proposed procedure to the developed gripper and experimentally verify its performances.