Three-Jaw Grip-Stick

Off-the-shelf pickup sticks only work if the person has the grip strength needed. This is a servo-driven, three-jawed alternative.

darkredhorse

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Description

Off-the-shelf pickup sticks only work if the person has the grip strength needed. Also, the gripper only works when closing around the outside of an object, and can't adapt to variations in shape. My project is a single-servo, planetary gear actuated, three-jawed alternative that has variable speed, and force limits.
The fingers are special triangular, pivoting shapes that adjust to a wide variety of objects, and can even pickup objects by opening from the inside.
The planet carriers and the ring gear have auxilliary jaws which provide the ability to grip even very small objects, while the three-jawed mechanism handles the larger objects, including door-knobs.
Designed in FreeCAD; Printed on an UP!Mini 3D printer in ABS; Dynamixel AX-12A servo driven; Arduino controlled

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Planetary Gripper
darkredhorse • 09/11/2017 at 23:23 • 0 comments

The very early inspiration for the current version of the gripper came in three pieces:
1) The ring gear and the planet carriers could be outfitted with fingers
2)The planet gears themselves could be the drivers for the fingers
3) From a previous two-jawed gripper, the strange triangular, pivoting-about-their-centre "fingers" could conform to different shapes by pivoting like windshield wipers do to conform to a windshield
The result is odd-looking, but can pickup virtually any shape, a wide range of sized objects, and grips from outside or inside a larger hollow object as needed.