Schunk’s uses carbon fibre to lighten standard CGH long stroke gripper

The standard CGH long-stroke gripper with the CFC housing is 40% lighter, has an E-value four times higher and a tensile force twice as high as one where aluminium is used in its construction. Schunk's development engineers have exploited composite fibre technology to ensure high stability of the gripper. The gripper housing has been manufactured according to specific stress requirements by using an RTM process. The result is a light and rigid gripper with torsional stiffness. At a weight of 11.7 kg, the delivers a gripping force of 2,500 N and a variable stroke per gripper finger of up to 160 mm. The decoupled re-circulating ball carriages ensure that the acting moments will be optimally distributed onto the whole rolling elements enabling up to 90% of the energy used to arrive at the finger. The module can be exactly adjusted to the individual load through the number and distance of the guide carriages. For particularly high gripping forces or very long fingers, the distance between the carriages is increased. It is therefore possible to use fingers of more than 1 m length and the same clamping forces will act along the whole finger. To further increase the gripper efficiency, the stroke can be scaled at damped end positions. The positions 'open' and 'closed' are adjusted according to requirements and the complete cylinder does not have to be pressurised and de-pressurised at every cycle. This minimises cycle times and also reduces compressed air consumption. The scope-free belt-drive and the synchronised fingers ensure that the gripper also works precisely in case of varying strokes where small and big components can be alternately handled. Various robots can be directly adapted via an ISO flange.