Fluid Dynamics Aided Design of an Innovative Micro-gripper

The miniaturization of an increasing number of complex hybrid micro-products is currently leading the development of several micro-components to be manipulated and assembled, meeting various specifications related to the objects properties and the planned task. However, at the micro-scale, further challenges derive from the effects of surface forces between the object and the micro-gripper that have to be overcome to provide for an effective and successful manipulation. When contact micro-grippers are used, specific solutions to support the release phase are needed. In particular, further developments and novel tools should be developed for vacuum micro-grippers to actively release the components reliably and precisely. In this context, this paper presents a vacuum micro-gripper with an automatic releasing system able to overcome the adhesive forces simply and effectively. The paper reports the results of a preliminary computational fluid dynamics analysis and the development a numerical model able to represent the main gripper characteristics then to derive a first procedure for its design.