End of Arm Tooling (EOAT)
Grippers, vacuum cups, suction generators, magnetic pickups and quick-change couplers — the tooling between a robot wrist and the part. Specified from the part, not from the robot.
The useful discipline here is to describe the part first: its mass, its grip surface, whether that surface is flat, porous, oily or hot, and whether it can be gripped in the same place every time. Those five answers eliminate most of the catalogue. A flat, clean, rigid panel is a vacuum job and nothing else competes on cycle time. A rough casting with variable draft is a jaw gripper. A stack of thin ferrous blanks that must be separated one at a time needs a magnetic pickup with a fanning device, which is a different product from a plain magnet.
Quick-change couplers earn their cost the moment a cell handles more than one part family. Without one, a changeover means unbolting tooling and re-teaching the tool centre point; with one it is a thirty-second operation that repeats to within a few hundredths.
See the parent Robotics page for wrist flange standards. Sourced to order, with adapter plates and custom jaws machined in-house.
Lines in this category
- Parallel two-jaw grippers
- Three-jaw centric grippers
- Angular grippers
- Vacuum cups and pads
- Venturi and pump vacuum generators
- Magnetic pickups and fanning devices
- Quick-change couplers
- Compliance and force-limiting devices
Products
We source this line to order
We do not hold this category in stock, and we would rather say so than list parts we cannot ship. Send a part list, a specification or a photograph and we will quote it with a lead time — this is a line we supply regularly to order.
How to choose
Describe the part before looking at any gripper: mass, grip surface, surface condition, temperature, and whether the grip point repeats. Then size the gripping force with a safety factor for acceleration — a part held adequately at rest can be thrown during a fast move, and the force needed scales with the acceleration of the arm, not just gravity. Then confirm the wrist flange and the moment it will see. Then decide whether a quick-change coupler is justified by how often the cell changes over.
Frequently asked
How much gripping force do I need?
More than the part weight — usually two to four times, depending on how fast the arm moves and whether the grip is form-fitting or friction only. Send the part mass, the grip geometry and the cycle time and we will calculate rather than estimate.
Will vacuum work on a rough casting?
Usually not reliably. Vacuum needs a surface it can seal against; a rough or porous surface leaks faster than a generator can keep up and the part drops mid-cycle. Use jaws, or a bellows cup if the surface is only slightly uneven.
Can you machine custom gripper jaws for my part?
Yes, in-house. Send the part drawing or a sample plus the gripper model, and we will machine jaws that grip on a located surface — which is usually what turns an unreliable pick into a repeatable one.