Project Concorp

Design of custom robotic gripper for confectionery manufacturer

Customer: Concorp
Location: Jirnsum
Purpose: Using a cobot to pick up and box jars of confectionery
Expertise: Industrial automation, robotics, mechanical engineering

When standard solutions fail to deliver

Picking up jars of candy with a cobot. Doesn’t sound very challenging does it? Just a matter of attaching a row of suction cups to a robotic arm and launching. This is also what Concorp’s own technical department had tried. But what if the lids you place the suction cup on are not tight enough to the jars for this to work reliably? And on the outside of the jars there is no room to grab them here? Then it’s time to get Tooker Machinery involved.

Proof of concept

A clever mechanism of fingers that clamped the lids more firmly around the jars while gripping them was quickly devised. To ensure that this would work reliably, Tooker first supplied a simple 3D-printed specimen which was subjected to tests that allowed the specific shape of the fingers to be further optimized. Working with 3D printing is something we frequently use in the concept phase of our machine building projects, and it allows us to demonstrate working principles quickly and cost-effectively.

From problem to solution, from concept to realization

The final gripper became a feat of clever engineering, due in part to two additional challenges. First, the gripper had to be able to pick up different patterns of jars. In addition, the design had to be light enough because the UR10 robot already lifts 6 kg of confectionery, leaving little space within the maximum payload. The result? An ingenious, lightweight gripper that does perfectly what it is supposed to do.

The solution is now running satisfactorily in production and takes repetitive and monotonous work off the hands of line operators. As always, we deliver our machines complete, including comprehensive documentation such as manuals, spare parts lists and EU conformity declarations.