Pneumatic and hydraulic grippers are amongst the most well-liked gripper sorts (together with servo-electric). If you happen to’re questioning whether or not pneumatic or hydraulic grippers are prone to be the perfect match in your software, this text is for you as we evaluate and distinction the design, efficiency and usefulness of hydraulic and pneumatic grippers.
Spoiler: As showdowns go, this one is straightforward to name. We’ll quickly uncover that for collaborative robotic purposes, there is no such thing as a critical competitors between the 2: pneumatic grippers are the best alternative in your cobot-powered purposes.
Let’s discover out why…
What’s a hydraulic gripper?Â
Hydraulic grippers are heavy-duty grippers that apply the kind of forces required to deal with heavy (normally >50kg, 110.23 lb) objects.
How does a hydraulic gripper work?
Hydraulic grippers use pressurized fluids to maneuver a piston. When the piston strikes, it transfers this power to the claw, opening and shutting it.
What’s a pneumatic gripper? How does a pneumatic gripper work?
Pneumatic grippers use stress from a compressed air provide system to provide the facility required to maneuver an inside piston, thereby opening and shutting the pneumatic gripper fingers (or ‘jaws’). Pneumatic gripper mechanisms include no motors or gears, which makes it simple to translate the facility of a piston/cylinder system right into a gripping power.
Because the majority of producing amenities have already got entry to compressed air, deploying pneumatic grippers is straightforward and cost-effective. One of many primary advantages of pneumatic grippers is that they supply a excessive quantity of gripping power in a small, mild and low-cost bundle. For manufacturing amenities the place area is at a premium, pneumatic grippers are a cheap and ergonomic alternative. They’re additionally fairly simple to keep up –after getting your pneumatic gripper working, it could possibly present hundreds of thousands of cycles with out requiring upkeep.
What’s the distinction between pneumatic and hydraulic grippers?
One of many main the reason why hydraulic grippers are not often, if ever, utilized in collaborative automation is as a result of the everyday payloads do not match. For causes of security, ease of deployment, price, mobility and footprint, cobots are designed for lower-than-hydraulic payloads of as much as round 16kg (35.3 lbs). Subsequently, for nearly each conceivable cobot-powered software, utilizing a hydraulic gripper could be costly overkill.
If it’s essential to raise weights of 500kg (1102.31lb), for instance, a regular industrial robotic with a hydraulic gripper and fencing may be your best option. However for Common Robots prospects, pneumatics provide completely sufficient power density for purposes comparable to meeting, materials dealing with and machine tending.
Moreover, since hydraulic grippers include pistons and oiled components, they’re much higher-maintenance than their servo-electric and pneumatic counterparts. Hydraulic gripper upkeep can also be complicated and may require expert technicians to keep up the oil, pump and reservoir. This highlights one other necessary purpose why pneumatic grippers are typically most well-liked over hydraulic grippers for collaborative purposes: cobots are designed for simple operation by non-expert end-users, so including a fancy hydraulic gripping system to a cobot will undermine the general system’s ease of use.Â
Since they depend on air relatively than fluids, pneumatic robotic grippers could be deployed in clear room environments. By comparability, hydraulic robotic grippers are too messy –particularly after they fail and leak hydraulic fluid into your work cell.Â
Moreover, by way of price, hydraulic grippers are way more costly than their pneumatic counterparts. If you’re interested in cobots partly due to their low price in comparison with conventional automation, then it does not make lots of sense to deploy a hydraulic gripper that might simply price greater than the cobot itself.Â
Lastly, if accuracy is necessary to your collaborative software, then remember that pneumatic gripping methods present larger accuracy than their hydraulic counterparts. Your gripper’s URCap software program and straightforward integration with Common Robots cobot vary ensures a continuing stream of knowledge that can be utilized to tweak your purposes and processes, cut back downtime and enhance productiveness.
URCaps are particular software program packages designed to make sure easy programming and management of UR licensed end-effectors and elements. UR+ is a worldwide ecosystem of elements, software program, and software kits which were validated and licensed to be mechanically, electrically and digitally suitable with cobots from Common Robots. UR+ hosts a wide array of pneumatic grippers from you to select from.
Pneumatic grippers simply win this robotic gripper showdown, however they’ve their very own limitations. For instance, as a result of they depend on pressurized air stream, power management shouldn’t be as exact as that supplied by electrical grippers. Offering a fragile grip will also be a problem for pneumatic methods because it’s laborious to regulate the gripper at very low pressures. If an exterior air provide is required, this could add further price to your deployment. And whereas pneumatic grippers are appropriate for a lot of clear room purposes, in the event that they fail, they’ll contaminate the air contained in the work cell. For these causes, some producers desire to make use of electrical grippers for his or her materials dealing with wants.
UR+ is a one-stop-shop for pneumatic robotic grippers
Let’s check out a few of pneumatic robotic gripper choices accessible by means of UR+
The GRIPKIT-P Sequence from Weiss Robotics is a pneumatic gripper and dealing with system for Common Robots. The GRIPKIT-P system comprises every thing finish customers have to arrange materials dealing with, meeting and machine tending duties inside minutes. If you happen to want excessive dynamics and gripping power with compact dimensions, GRIPKIT-P pneumatic grippers (in parallel or centric design) are ideally suited.
