Gripper system design

An innovative application is represented by stretch leveling of complete coUs for balancing strains along the total width and thickness. New systems are designed so that the gripper system does not leave impressions in the material. The result is an extremely flat, low-tension strip material. Strip thicknesses of up to 8 mm and strip width of up to 2,100 mm can be leveled (Henrich 2004). 

The EBR-II fuel-handling system is designed to facilitate loading of fresh fuel into the reactor and removal of SNF from the reactor to the adjacent fuel cycle facility (EBR-II, 1971 Koch). The fuelhandling system is displayed in Fig. 5.1, which shows the reactor, the fuel gripper, and the hold-down mechanisms, the transfer arm, the storage basket, and the fuel-unloading machine. 

Miniaturized copies of conventional grippers designed for macro handling of systems cannot meet the special requirements posed by the small dimensions of micro parts. Small gripper size and clean-room suitability are achieved, for example, by observing the following rules ... 

During the second semester of the sequence, the robot parts were either fabricated in-house, or purchased, and the structure was assembled. The EE s developed their system-level design into circuit and software details, and then built and programmed the control system. They completely built a bus based multi-processor system, with one Intel 8085 microprocessor for digital PID control on each of the three cartesian axes, one 8085 to handle the gripper and sensor inputs, and one 8085 to coordinate communications on the bus and to a host personal computer. They also designed and built sensor interfaces and pulse-width-modulated power amplifiers for the dc motor actuators. 

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