Robotic grippers are a new opportunity for growth in the packaging industry.

Robotic grippers in the packaging industry allow many production processes and applications to run more smoothly and with greater flexibility and stability. In addition, robots with grippers can perform much heavier or potentially hazardous tasks instead of humans. Grippers are now capable of carrying much heavier payloads than in the past, and they can be customized more easily, cheaply, and quickly, mainly thanks to 3D printing technology.

What can robotic grippers do, and how can they be used?

The primary role of a robotic gripper is to grip and stabilize products or items, and many fixtures can be modified to handle many different products and product sizes. The suitability of a gripper ultimately depends on the product or item it is intended to handle, as well as more specific factors such as material, shape, size, weight, and center of gravity.

In addition to the fact that grippers must avoid affecting the quality of the products they handle, it is also essential to keep the area around the gripper and robot as clean as possible. The grippers and the robotic arms to which they are attached must be able to perform their tasks without colliding with or causing damage to human workers, equipment, products, and products that have been palletized.

Pneumatic and electric grippers

Grippers generally fall into two main categories: pneumatic and electric grippers. Pneumatic grippers are still the more common of the two variants, but electric grippers are becoming more precise and efficient.

Important gripper design features

There are some essential design features for a gripper to do its job safely.

The gripper should be as light as possible but must also be solid and stable; it must not bend or start to swing from the weight it carries. The gripper must be able to grip different types and sizes of products.

The gripper must be safe for collaborative mode, mainly when operating without a fence. Grippers should not have sharp edges. Soft foam can reduce the risk of damage by sharp grippers.

The larger the gripper, the greater the force it exerts and the faster it moves to the operating point furthest from the robot base. This means that very large grippers must move more slowly than miniature grippers.

Ensure smooth transition times

Fixture design should be as flexible as possible to handle different products. Innovative designs that include clever pick-up points allow for highly flexible multiple pick-and-place operations.

If the entire fixture needs to be changed, the design should include quick changeover tools to save valuable production time. The best designs allow operators to efficiently perform the changeover with a short introduction and can even be handled by the robot.

Using Grippers in the Food and Electronics Industries

Grippers can be used in any production environment where the product needs to be picked up, held, and placed. However, different industries may have specific requirements for hygiene and safety, which both grippers and robots must meet. Two industries where these requirements are exceptionally high are food and electronics. For electronics, grippers need to meet specific special requirements regarding electrostatic discharge, which can damage sensitive products.

Different hygiene standards apply to grippers and robots in the food industry, depending on where they are located in the production process. More specifically, it depends on whether the robots and grippers are in direct contact with the food during its preparation, whether they are involved in the packaging of the food, or whether they only handle food that has been placed and sealed in a container.

3D printing opens up new opportunities for robotic gripping

The flexibility and speed of 3D printing provide the ability to create solutions that can more easily meet different, often particular, customer needs and can do so at affordable production costs. In the context of robotic grippers, 3D printing helps create protective covers and similar methods of shielding robots. While the gripper itself is not manufactured using 3D printing, various components that may contribute to the work of the gripper and the robot can be manufactured in this way.

Creating objects with specific shapes and sizes for specific or unique applications is an even more significant advantage. While this could certainly have been achieved before 3D printing was introduced, it is a much more expensive and time-consuming process. It is very beneficial that these custom components, objects with non-standard measurements, and prototypes can all be made relatively quickly using 3D printing.

In the future, we expect to see grippers become more flexible and multi-faceted. Customer expectations continue to rise regarding the types of products that grippers can handle, as well as product size and payload. We are also likely to see grippers made from lighter materials. Aluminum and steel are the most common materials used in fixture manufacturing today and are unlikely to disappear anytime soon. However, shortly, we may see the emergence of other lightweight, robust, resilient, and economical manufacturing materials.