Development of a suction cup with a disc spring

Abstract

This paper presents a new suction cup with a disc spring for exiting adsorption mechanisms (for example, wall-climbing robots). The center of the suction cup can be pulled up manually through the use of buckling of the disc spring. When deformation of the disc spring reaches a certain balance point, it can sufficiently generate adsorption force. However, with time, the adsorption force will gradually decrease because of air inflow into the suction cup. Then, the spring can be automatically pulled up again to next balance point according to the air inflow. Repeating this process enables the adsorption for a long duration. By pushing back the disc spring to the original position manually, the suction cup is easily detached from the wall. This proposed suction cup can achieve long adsorption, easy attachment and detachment, and energy saving. In this paper, analysis of the adsorption force, design of the suction cup, and experiment of the prototype are conducted.