An Industrial Prototype of a Liquid Solidification Based Micro-Gripping System

This paper presents the results of developing an industrial prototype of a micro-gripping system. The system is based on the liquid solidification gripping principle. Part handling actions are realized by changing the gripping intermediate between its liquid phase and solid phase. The current research aims to bring the understanding of the gripping principle as well as the design of the gripping system one step closer to industrial application. The paper describes the physical principle of the gripping method and the design of an industrial prototype gripper. Tests of the gripping system show that a cycle time of 1.4 s can be achieved with 90% reliability for gripping a part with good heat conductivity (17 consecutive gripping actions in one process run, result was concluded after several runs). A cycle time of less than 1s can be achieved on gripping parts with lower heat conductivity.