DayElBunger
Industrial
- Jan 3, 2018
- 2
I have an application that requires "clamping" panels of corrugated aluminum in order to move them around with a robot.
The aluminum material is 0.5mm in thickness, corrugated to a panel thickness of between 6mm - 9mm (imagine square wave corrugated cardboard)
The panel size will vary, but will be on average 400mm x 400mm in size.
Initial thoughts involve the following process:
Place a "puck" into a recess - this puck could be magnetic or of any suggested material
Manually placing the panel on top of the puck
Robot will move to puck location and approach part until contact with top surface
Magnet activated - could be electro-magnet, but think that pneumatic approach of neodymium magnet would be stronger???
Robot will be able to lift part and move it through the rest of the process
Concerns:
Having enough clamping ability to hold part accurately while moving it
Not deforming the part due to clamping force - not sure this is really an issue
Ideally, a fairly hard urethane material (60-70 dur) would actually be in contact with the aluminum itself, adding stick-tion, preventing marking of surface, but unfortunately adding additional gap.
Questions:
Is an electo-magnet even a realistic option?
Would a magnet on both sides of the sandwich be the strongest?
Are multiple smaller magnets better than a single larger magnet - cogging effect, sorry for the terminology
Is there a configuration or sandwich of materials that would improve the performance?
Thanks for any advice or pointers.
The aluminum material is 0.5mm in thickness, corrugated to a panel thickness of between 6mm - 9mm (imagine square wave corrugated cardboard)
The panel size will vary, but will be on average 400mm x 400mm in size.
Initial thoughts involve the following process:
Place a "puck" into a recess - this puck could be magnetic or of any suggested material
Manually placing the panel on top of the puck
Robot will move to puck location and approach part until contact with top surface
Magnet activated - could be electro-magnet, but think that pneumatic approach of neodymium magnet would be stronger???
Robot will be able to lift part and move it through the rest of the process
Concerns:
Having enough clamping ability to hold part accurately while moving it
Not deforming the part due to clamping force - not sure this is really an issue
Ideally, a fairly hard urethane material (60-70 dur) would actually be in contact with the aluminum itself, adding stick-tion, preventing marking of surface, but unfortunately adding additional gap.
Questions:
Is an electo-magnet even a realistic option?
Would a magnet on both sides of the sandwich be the strongest?
Are multiple smaller magnets better than a single larger magnet - cogging effect, sorry for the terminology
Is there a configuration or sandwich of materials that would improve the performance?
Thanks for any advice or pointers.