Getting a grip with suction cups

摘要

Companies in the highly automated metal-fabricating industries are going through tough times, making efficient production and fast assembly lines crucial. Metal fabrication often involves station-to-station handling of slippery, oily metal sheets or blanks. Suction cups are the most common tools used to handle and move such sheets. But as production speeds accelerate, suction cups must also become more capable of handling these speeds and loads. Suction cups are easily adaptable to the changes going on in fabrication industries but they do present some challenges, however. One is to prevent cups from slipping out of position or even dropping parts due to oil or die lubrication used in forming operations. Suction cups will shift or move if the holding force or grip is less than the sum of all counteracting forces. In slow handling applications, the force that determines the size, number, and performance of the suction cups is the weight of the object handled.