Home made vacuum gripper

This gripper uses an inexpensive syringe as the vacuum source. A gripper is the final part of a robot and usually is used to grab an object. I thought to make a gripper wich can hold the things and carry them around. The gripper approaches the object to the suction cup, it create a vacuum and the object remains attached to the suction cup. At this point it can moved where you want. Eliminating the depression the object falls for gravity.The gripper will pickup any small light object that has a smooth exterior finish. On the market there are very few solutions that are affordable for a hobbyist.

Some components of Lego or Fischertechnik but they cost a lot of money. The solution I present is based on an idea from Lynxmotion and it is very cheap.

The gripper uses a simple and inexpensive servo (in my case the Futaba S3003 a) that costs around 10 euros. The other things are: a rectangle of PVC foam, a pipe and a connector for micro-irrigation that cost a few cents and a 20 cc syringe which costs about 10 cents. Some screw and clamps. The suction cup is made from an arrow. Having a baby has advantages, such as I can reuse his toys! We are quietly under 15 euros, an interesting result for a device of this type.

Surely we can not define the gripper as a force of nature, basically using a simple syringe and a servo to go up and down, but does its job. It can hold comfortably 200 grams for a long time. There are no particular complications, mechanical or electronic, so I leave the word to photos and video. Note that the cutting of PVC is made with a cutter and the holes are made on the PVC with a screw.

More pics here: http://robottini.altervista.org/237