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Guide to use the Vacuum Gripper

This article mainly introduces the installation and use of the vacuum gripper, and the sealing of the unused suction cups.

W
Written by Wang Daniel
Updated over 3 years ago

1) Installation of vacuum gripper

    ●  Move the UFACTORY xArm to a safe position; (avoid touching the xArm mounting surface or other equipment)

    ●  Power off the UFACTORY xArm; (press the emergency stop button on the control box)

    ●  Fix the vacuum gripper on the end of the UFACTORY xArm with 2 M6 bolts;

    ●  Connect the UFACTORY xArm and the vacuum gripper with a connection cable;

Note:

    ●  When connecting the vacuum gripper connection cable, be sure to power off the UFACTORY xArm, the emergency stop button is in the pressed state, and the power indicator of the UFACTORY xArm is off, so as to avoid the UFACTORY xArm failure caused by hot-plugging;

    ●  Due to the length limitation of the vacuum gripper connection cable, the vacuum gripper interface and the tool IO interface must be in the same direction;

    ●  When connecting the vacuum gripper and the UFACTORY xArm, be sure to align the positioning holes on the two ends of the interface. The male pins of the connecting cable are relatively thin, please be careful to avoid bending the male pins during disassembly.

2) Selection of suction cup

 The vacuum gripper is equipped with 5 suction cups, which can be partly selected for use according to the size of the object, and the unused suction cups need to be sealed. 

 Type of suction cup:   DP-30 suction cup      DP-15 Suction cup      DP-6 Suction cup

● How to seal unused suction cups
When sucking smaller and lighter objects, such as Rubik's Cube, we can seal the unused suction cups

● How to replace suction cups
When sucking smaller and lighter objects, such as coins, we can replace DP-30 suction cup with DP-6 suction cup.

3) The control of the vacuum gripper

Example

The role of this program:

Execute this program to control the vacuum gripper to suck the target object at the specified position, and then place the target object at the target position.

The main commands explain:

【object is (picked/release) 】: Detect whether the vacuum gripper has picked (released) the object, if it is detected that the vacuum gripper has picked (released) the object, then jump out of this command and execute the next command. If the timeout period is exceeded, the vacuum gripper has not yet picked (released) the object, it will also jump out of the command and execute the next command.

【set UFACTORY xarm vacuum gripper (ON/OFF) object detection (true/false) [set]】:

Set the vacuum gripper to be on and off.

[object detection] = true: detect whether the object is sucked, if not, it will jump out of the entire program.

[object detection] = false: do not detect whether the object is sucked.

import sys

import time

import datetime

import threading


from xarm import version

from xarm.wrapper import XArmAPI

print('xArm-Python-SDK Version:{}'.format(version.__version__))


arm = XArmAPI('192.168.1.135')

arm.clean_warn()

arm.clean_error()

arm.motion_enable(True)

arm.set_mode(0)

arm.set_state(0)

time.sleep(1)


arm.set_position(*[425.9, 0.0, 678.8, 180.0, 0.0, 0.0], speed=200, mvacc=20000, radius=-1.0, wait=True)

arm.set_position(*[430.4, 0.0, 389.7, 180.0, -1.2, 0.1], speed=200, mvacc=20000, radius=-1.0,wait=True)

arm.set_suction_cup(True, False)


for i in range(int(6)):

if arm.get_suction_cup()[1] == 1:

break

time.sleep(0.5)


if arm.get_suction_cup()[1] == 1:

arm.set_servo_angle(angle=[97.8, -23.9, -93.9, 0.0, 116.1, 0.0],speed=20,  mvacc=500,wait=True)

arm.set_position(*[-36.9, 344.5, 471.8, 180.0, -1.7, 97.8], speed=200,mvacc=20000, radius=-1.0, wait=True)

arm.set_suction_cup(False, False)

arm.set_position(*[425.9, 0.0, 678.8, 180.0, 0.0, 0.0], speed=200,mvacc=20000, radius=-1.0, wait=True)

else:

arm.set_servo_angle(angle=[-81.9, -23.9, -93.9, 0.0, 116.1, 0.0],speed=20, mvacc=500, wait=True)

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