With increasing demand for laborers in the work place, and the lack of supply in our day and age, we are continuing to see a drastic change in the way we produce and manufacture consumer goods. This is forcing a lot of companies to spend resources in ways they never considered before. It’s requiring them to invest in long-term equipment solutions that will provide a return on their investment over the course of long periods of time.
These types of investments usually involve the addition of a robot. This is especially true when companies aren’t just filling the spots of labor workers, but are also trying to improve efficiency. As we continue to see a shift in how we manufacture goods without using laborers, we will continue to see robots being used in a wide variety of different applications.
To enable robots to perform such a vast amount of different tasks, different types of end effectors have to be designed and tested. End effectors are the most important part of a robot’s design. End effectors are commonly referred to as the part of the robot that interacts with the environment or product it is responsible for manipulating. In manufacturing, a robot arm can only perform a limited amount of tasks without requiring changes to be made to the end effector’s ancillary hardware and/or programming.
The most common type of end effector is called a gripper, which is an effector that is mostly used to interact with the product directly. When it comes to robotic prehension, there are four general categories of grippers:
Impactive
An impactive gripper is one of the most popular end effectors to be seen in general manufacturing applications. These are usually jaw or claw-like effectors that physically grasp the object to relocate or reorient the object based on the need. Here are a couple reasons impactive grippers are the most popular:
1. Versatility: They can be designed and engineered to be used in any industry to handle any type of object.
2. Low controls cost: Grasping and moving an object doesn’t require an extensive amount of controls programming, so they tend to cost less.
3. Common Responsibility: Impactive grippers are often sought after to fulfill the lower and more time consuming responsibilities of a manufacturing facility. This frees up labor workers to perform higher priority responsibilities.
Ingressive
Ingressive grippers are end effectors that include pins, needles, or hackles that are used to physically penetrate the surface of the object. These are commonly used in applications like carbon and glass fiber handling, where physically grasping the object isn’t possible or efficient.
From a controls standpoint, this type of gripper requires quite an extensive amount of controls engineering. However, it most effectively increases production efficiency because it is commonly used to perform responsibilities that are tedious and time-consuming.
Astrictive
When a robot isn’t allowed to grip or penetrate an object such as a bag of flour, astrictive grippers are implemented. These grippers create and use an attractive force that is then applied to the object in order to grasp the product. These attractive forces are created by vacuum, magneto or electro adhesion.
Astrictive grippers are usually used to handle products with sensitive surface requirements such as paint or bagged products. They can also be seen handling objects or products that are unorthodox to handle (small parts, pallets, or furniture).
Contigutive
Not all grippers are used to relocate or reorient objects. Contigutive grippers are implemented into a system where the robot is required to make direct contact with the product in order for adhesion to take place. This type of application is used on products that require the addition of things like glue, surface tension, or freezing.
This gripper requires an extensive amount of controls engineering in order to measure and gauge adhesion amounts. However, they are able to perform difficult tasks 300% faster than any worker.
As we steer our way into a new age of manufacturing, we can remain confident that our technology will keep up with high demands of our consumers. As more and more companies continue to invest in robots, new and creative end effectors will be engineered to enable robots to perform beyond our current expectation. This will continue to fill the gap between labor, worker, demand and supply.
If you are hoping to implement a robot into an existing system, please contact us for a quote! https://www.tuffautomation.com/request-quote