Design and Analysis of Compliant Micro-gripper Using Pseudo Rigid Body Model(PRBM)

The increasing demands for precision in every walk of era have given rise to new and efficient technologies. The millimeters have been brought down to micrometer or even nanometers. This has led to development of new mechanisms with no joints known as compliant. The gripper comprises of very simple shapes which are very easy to manufacture& design. The design of the hinges play a very vital role and they replace the conventional torsional springs. The proposal work deals with the two design methods most widely used for designing the compliant gripper including the finite element analysis(FEA) and Pseudo Rigid Body model. The comparison between these methods, result in stating the convenience as well as the significance of the design. From the results obtained in can be stated that more logical and accurate results by the PRBM. Hence the error obtained in result is 6% and 16% for stainless steel(SS) and aluminium (AL7075) respectively when compared with FEA results. The micro-gripper which is designed is a very small device used for the manipulation of the micro level objects, which cannot be manipulated using conventional grippers, the dimensions of the afore said micro-grippers are 50 X 30 mm. The force range of the gripper is from 10N to 40 N. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.