Larger Soft Gripper for Delicate Parts
Silicone fingers plus a vacuum cavity grip fragile and oddly shaped parts up to 4 in. wide.
Piab’s larger one-piece silicone gripper gives robots a soft touch. (Photo: Piab)
Piab has introduced a larger model of its piSoftgrip robot gripper for handling sensitive and fragile products. The piSoftgrip 100-4 has four silicone rubber gripping fingers and a vacuum cavity, allowing it to hold objects up to 100 mm (3.93 in.) wide. Like the other members of the piSoftgrip family, this gripper is made in one piece of silicone approved for food contact and suitable for both high- and low-temperature environments.
This vacuum gripper is suitable for use on both jointed-arm and linear robots for injection molding as well as many other applications, such as metalworking and handling fruit and other food products. It is as simple to control and install as a suction cup. No specific programming is needed, and gripping force is controllable by adjusting the vacuum level. It is simple to clean, with a stainless-steel washdown fitting. A sealed vacuum cavity is said to be protected against dust.
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