Study of Grippers in Automatic Handling of Nonwoven Material

Mechanical grippers are most popular in the textile industry due to their simple construction and reliability, while the use of vacuum grippers is still limited. The aim of this paper was to investigate the potential of vacuum grippers in grasping nonwoven materials. For this experiment, three types of vacuum suction caps were chosen, i.e., the flat cap, small circle cap and large circle cap. Grasping is conducted in two different positions of gripper and at four different inlet pressures entering into the ejector. The results of grasping indicated that the highest potential for grasping has the flat suction cap with the application of the ejector L and when the gripper is placed in the middle of the material. Grasping with a small suction cap is not possible when the gripper is placed in the center of the material with application of both L and H ejectors. But, with its placement at the edge of material, the success of grasping increases, especially when using the ejector H. Based on the results, grasping with a large suction cap is not recommended.