Universal Robotic Gripper

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

I'm at a loss as to how one should calculate grip force with that. Anyone have any ideas?

Originally Posted by JesseK

...It all depends on the friction of the balloon, tensile strength of the balloon, and I'm sure the vacuum plays a large part in it too. Then we'd have to consider the angle of grip as well.

It seems to me that grip force would be essentially independent of the balloon. The only relevant factors I can think of immediately are the amount of "shrinkage" of the filler material when vacuum is applied, and the stability (probably shear strength, mostly) of the vacuum-compacted material.

(The friction of the balloon definitely matters when you try to figure how much weight you can pick up with a given grip force, of course.)