What you need¶
The gripper¶
The SSG-48 is sold assembled, calibrated and configured in the Source Robotics shop. It ships with the current Spectral firmware and the bootloader installed, its driver in gripper mode and its motor calibrated; the gripper calibration (finding the end stops) runs after every power-up and is part of normal use.
Or build it. The SSG-48 is open source, and that is important to us: the CAD and printable files, the bill of materials, the assembly manual and video, the firmware and the software are all published. The build guide is the order to do it in.
What is in the box¶
The gripper, assembled, calibrated and configured, in black or grey. Not in the box: the fingers, which you print from the repository; the cable, sold separately; the 8 mm shaft coupler for a PAROL6, which you ask for when ordering; a CAN adapter for a PC.
A cable and a 24 V supply¶
The gripper is powered and controlled through one M8 4-pin cable: 24 V, GND, CANH, CANL.
| Where the gripper goes | Cable |
|---|---|
| PAROL6 | the PAROL6 gripper cable from the shop |
| PAR6 | the PAR6 gripper cable (the shop; coming soon), wired differently from the PAROL6 one |
| a bench, or your own robot | a cable you make from an M8 4-pin connector and four wires, see The cable |
The two robot cables differ
PAROL6 and PAR6 put the four signals on different pins. A cable for the wrong robot, or a self-made cable with a wrong pin, puts 24 V where the CAN bus belongs and destroys the gripper's driver. Check the pinout before you plug in a cable for the first time.
On the bench, a 24 V supply with a current limit (2 A is plenty for one gripper) is the safest source.
A CAN interface¶
The gripper talks CAN. On a robot, the robot's control board provides the bus. On a PC, the
CANvas USB-to-CAN adapter does; it shows up as a
serial port and works with Motor GUI, the Python library and the ROS 2 drivers. Any adapter that python-can supports works
with the library.
Software¶
- Motor GUI, motorgui.com, in the browser over the CANvas adapter: the recommended tool to test and set up a gripper, with a gripper panel for the SSG-48 and the MSG; see Motor GUI. The earlier SSG-gripper-GUI, a Python program, is legacy.
- Python:
pip install Spectral-BLDC, the library the ROS 2 drivers are built on; see With Python. - ROS 2: the ssg48_adaptive_electric_gripper_ros2 package, or the MSG gripper's driver, which speaks the same protocol; see With ROS 2.
- PAROL6 and PAR6: the robots' own software drives the gripper; see On PAROL6 and PAR6.
- For a self-built gripper: a 3.3 V USB-to-serial adapter (serial adapter) for the driver's UART port, to configure the driver with Motor GUI or a terminal; see Driver configuration. For a self-build we recommend the Spectral Micro BLDC starter kit: it has this adapter and the rest of what the driver's setup needs (Kits and the shop).
Optional¶
- Fingers for your objects: the fin-ray and pinch fingers in the repository, or your own on the jaw plate template; see Jaws.
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