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CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background
Pneumatic system is commonly used in industries such as in the robotic arm application without having to worry about polluting the environment because the
systems only use air. It can be said that the pneumatic system is environmental friendly. A pneumatic gripper is a specific type of pneumatic actuator that typically
involves either parallel or angular motion of surfaces that will grip an object and is commonly used as part of a pick and place system that will allow a component to
be picked up and placed somewhere else as part of a manufacturing system.
Some grippers act directly on the object they are gripping based on the force of the air pressure supplied to the gripper, while others will use a mechanism such as
sensors to control the amount of force applied to the object being gripped. Grippers can also varied in terms of the opening size, the amount of force that can be applied,
and the shape of the gripping surfaces frequently called Jaws. They can be used to pick up everything from very small items to very large items. Grippers are
frequently added to industrial robots as end effectors in order to allow the robot to interact with other objects.
This project is aimed to design and develops a working pneumatic gripper to be integrated with the COMAU robot in Robotics Laboratory at Faculty of
Manufacturing Engineering FKP at Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka UTeM. The design shall incorporate proper valves and cylinder system for pick and place
application for the robot. In order to achieve the goal of the project, CAD design and pneumatic circuitry knowledge is crucial. Other knowledge that is required in
2 finishing this project includes machine design, applied mechanic, programming,
fabricating and material selection.
1.2 Problem Statement
The current pneumatic gripper for COMAU in FKP’s robotic laboratory is small in size and can only grip small and light weight material. The base of the gripper
attached with the end of the robot arm is only about 55 mm x 55 mm in dimension. The dimension of the gripper body is 50 mm x 42 mm and the thickness is 27 mm.
The jaw of the gripper it self is small. The thickness is only 13 from the thickness of the body. The jaws can open maximum 10 mm both side and only can grip up to 30
mm of the material. It is also not suitable for gripping a heavy cylindrical object because the probability the object will slip is high. The hard surface of the jaw can
easily damage the soft material surface and edge the gripper did not construct with build in force sensor to begin with when grasping the material. Because the size is
small, the jaws cannot strongly hold a heavier object and probably will slip while running the pick and place process. The external gripping force per finger effective
value is 42 N and the internal gripping force per finger effective value is 66 N.
1.3 Project Aim and Objective
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