Design of a Novel Electrostatic Gripper

Automated microassembly requires reliable, flexible and fast deviccs for handling microparts. Components are often fragile, optically polished and wear sensitive, consequently suitable grippers have to be developed to meet these requirements. This paper deals with the design of a new electrostatic gripper for grasping mini and microparts. The analyses of the different kinds of electrostatic grippers and the comparison of their features lead to the design of a novel electrostatic microgripper with centring capabilities. Therefore in order to quantitatively estimate the forces, the working areas and performances of the new gripper, a FEM analysis has been performed. A series of preliminary experimental results showed that the new device has good capability in grasping components different in shape (spheres, cylinders, etc.), dimensions (between 0.3 and 1 mm) and materials (conductors as metal and graphite, dielectrics as plastic and glass). Centring effect has been also theoretically demonstrated and experimentally measured.

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