Skip to content

Vacuum gripper

A suction cup on a vacuum generator, fed by the same valve and tubes as the pneumatic gripper.

Parts

The BOM's vacuum section: a suction cup gripper, a vacuum generator (ejector) and a 4 mm to 6 mm coupler. The holder is GRIPPER_ATTACHMENTS/vacuum_gripper_holder.STL.

Mounting

Print the holder and bolt the gripper to it. The gripper spins freely in the holder by default; to fix its orientation, tie it with a zip tie to the screw shown in the figure.

The vacuum gripper on the forearm
Figure 1: The vacuum gripper on the forearm.

Air

A vacuum generator needs one supply line, so one of the valve's two ports is blocked: a short piece of tube with an M3 screw and threadlocker screwed into it does the job.

One valve port blocked with a tube and an M3 screw
Figure 2: One valve port blocked with a tube and an M3 screw.

Driving it

The valve switches the air to the ejector, which pulls the vacuum: Output(1,HIGH) holds, Output(1,LOW) drops. In the Python API, select_tool("VACUUM") gives tool.open(), which switches output 1 high, and tool.close(), which switches it low. With the tubing above, open() holds the part and close() drops it; write_io(0, 1) and write_io(0, 0) do the same.

Warning

The part drops the moment the air stops, with the E-stop, a valve fault or a power failure. Do not carry anything over something it can damage.

Comments

Found a mistake on this page? Edit it on GitHub · Report it · Get help · This page as Markdown · llms.txt · The whole manual as PDF