SAS awarded patent for programmable “four handed end-of-arm device
Article Type: New products From: Industrial Robot: An International Journal, Volume 37, Issue 6
End-of-arm tooling (EOAT) is generally thought of as a “one-handed”unit that grips, employs a suction cup or motorized device. SAS has invented an EOAT with four independent arms, each with a programmable positioning ability(Figure 1).
The SAS EOAT device can pick up four different components at different locations at the same time. A key application the EOAT was designed for is the injection molding part retrieval requirement. The EOAT can reach into the mould and retrieve four parts simultaneously from different locations in the mould. When the mould is changed out for a different run, the robot need be only reprogrammed. There is no need to change the EOAT on the robot, speeding production change over.
Each arm can be used for a vacuum cup or finger style gripper. Each of the tool holder arms can be programmed to one of 28 different locations along its own linear axis. The locations are addressed in binary code from the robot controller.
For more info on the SAS programmable “four handed” device, please visit: www.sas-automation.com

