With Hand-E, you can touch the fingertips close to the surface and be sure that they’ll remain at the same distance from the surface throughout the motion.
7. Precise force settings
Picking up delicate parts is only possible if you can precisely control the force applied by the gripper. With Hand-E, as with the other Adaptive Grippers, you can precisely control the gripping force. Hand-E has a force range of 60–130 N, and you can control the force in increments of 0.27 N.
8. Easy to hand-guide
Hand-guiding is an easy way to program a robot: you just move the robot to where you want it and save the position to the robot program. But whereas some grippers are hard to grab, Hand-E is designed to be easy to grab, which makes hand-guiding even easier.
9. Simple to program
Some grippers add a surprising amount of programming complexity. Others, like Hand-E, can be programmed within minutes.
All three Robotiq Adaptive Grippers have the same intuitive programming software.
10. Precise speed settings
When you need a gripper to pick up large, durable objects, the exact speed of motion is not so important. However, precise applications often require you to set the closing speed.
The speed of a precision gripper should be controllable down to fractions of a millimeter. You can set Hand-E’s speed in real time by increments of 0.5 mm/s.
11. Manufactured to low tolerances
The only way to build a “precision” gripper is to manufacture it to low tolerances. This is certainly the case with Hand-E, which has been manufactured to the lowest tolerances of all our grippers.
12. Potentially cableless
Cables are a pain: they spoil your nice, sleek robot by running up the robot’s arm. However, there’s no need for cables when you use Hand-E with the UR e-Series robots, since the e-Series has internal cabling that plugs directly into the gripper.
Compare the two demos from our booth at automatica 2018. The thermostat assembly demo used Hand-E with a normal UR robot and had cables running up the arm. The pick-and-place demo used an e-Series robot with no cables. Doesn’t it look so much neater?
No more cables! Hand-E is ready for the Universal Robots e-Series.
13. Highly durable
Although a precision gripper is designed to handle small and delicate objects, it should not be delicate itself. The mechanical design and fabrication of the gripper should be durable enough to withstand tough industrial environments and demanding tasks.
14. Sealed from contaminants
Industrial environments are often filled with dust, dirt, and liquid. Since precision grippers are often used in these environments, they should be sealed to protect against such contaminants. Hand-E has been manufactured to withstand environments with lots of liquid and dust.
15. Highly reliable
All our Adaptive Grippers are reliable, but this is particularly true for Hand-E, which is targeted at demanding precision tasks. Plus, keep downtime to a minimum by combining it with Insights.
16. Quicker to deploy
Many of the above benefits, especially the simplicity of programming and ease of control, make Hand-E quick to deploy. In most cases, you can have it up and running within an hour.
17. Quicker to earn an ROI
A quicker deployment also means you’ll see a return on investment (ROI) sooner. Also, since some precision tasks are value-added tasks (e.g., precise assembly) it can be easier to work out the ROI for these than it is for non-value-added tasks.
18. Small footprint
A precision gripper shouldn’t take up a lot of space, because precision tasks often have to be carried out in a restricted workspace. This makes such tasks difficult for a lot of bulky cobot grippers. Hand-E, on the other hand, has a working envelope of just 75 mm, meaning it can fit into very small spaces.
19. Highly customizable
One property of precision tasks is that they often require custom fingertips. Small, shiny, or otherwise-awkward gripping points can be handled by making new fingertips or modifying existing ones.
With Hand-E, it’s easy to create new fingertips and attach them to the actuation rack in minutes.
20. Highly versatile
Even if you’re just using the supplied aluminum fingertips, Hand-E is a very versatile gripper. It can handle a huge range of objects with a high degree of precision.
This versatility is what makes Hand-E, as well as the rest of our Adaptive Gripper range, so useful for many applications. And that’s why a precision gripper is well worth the investment.
Related: Parallel Robot Grippers: Which is Best?
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