top of page
DIANA LI
Engineering, Design, Medical Devices & DIY
SWINGING GRIPPER
Skills: CAD, Engineering Drawings Design for Manufacture and Assembly, Rapid Prototyping,
Material and Catalog Component Selection
Machines: Laser-cutting, 3D Printing, Milling Machine
Software: SolidWorks
​
The goal of this project was to build a robotic gripper that holds a 3 lb. aluminum "fidget spinner" through full dynamic swinging motion. The gripper was required to grip and ungrip without failure, and after dynamic motion, the fidget spinner should be able to slide back onto the initial bottom board to indicate minimal displacement.
Initially, we experimented with a gripper using a string-pulling mechanism that would pull the 3 arms together and grip onto the fidget spinner. However, we found that this method wasn't precise and didn't provide enough torque. Our final design aimed to rectify three specific challenges we found in our initial prototype: to make more precise and specific points of contact between the gripper and the spinner, to ensure there is ample force applied to the spinner by the motor, and to ensure quick and easy mounting of the base of our gripper to the swinging arm.
 |  |
|---|
In our final design, there are eight main custom-made components including two sets of extended arms, two custom-shaped gripping pads, a set of gears, a pair of bearing housing components, a carefully optimized base plate, and a custom-machined shaft. We evaluated our gripper through finite element analysis, factor of safety calculations, and failure analysis. After iterations of testing through the manufacturing process, our gripper passed all requirements. However, on testing day, the fidget spinner exceeded displacement by 2mm, and if we were to improve this design, we'd look into a gripping pad with a higher coefficient of friction to avoid too much displacement.
bottom of page