Capillary forces and capillary bridges between a three-finger microgripper and a plate

Fan, Zenghua; Liu, Zixiao; Huang, Congcong; Wang, Han; Fan, Ming; Wang, Lefeng

doi:10.1080/00218464.2023.2186226

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 37 publications

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“…However, they require high voltages to operate and are susceptible to interference from external electric fields [ 21 , 22 , 23 ]. Capillary grippers use a small drop at the surface of the gripper in order to create a liquid bridge and the meniscus to increase this force between gripper and part [ 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 ]. Vacuum grippers use suction to grip SMT components.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design of a Multi-Mode Hybrid Micro-Gripper for Surface Mount Technology Component Assembly

Fontana,

Iacono,

Negri

et al. 2023

Micromachines

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In the last few decades, industrial sectors such as smart manufacturing and aerospace have rapidly developed, contributing to the increase in production of more complex electronic boards based on SMT (Surface Mount Technology). The assembly phases in manufacturing these electronic products require the availability of technological solutions able to deal with many heterogeneous products and components. The small batch production and pre-production are often executed manually or with semi-automated stations. The commercial automated machines currently available offer high performance, but they are highly rigid. Therefore, a great effort is needed to obtain machines and devices with improved reconfigurability and flexibility for minimizing the set-up time and processing the high heterogeneity of components. These high-level objectives can be achieved acting in different ways. Indeed, a work station can be seen as a set of devices able to interact and cooperate to perform a specific task. Therefore, the reconfigurability of a work station can be achieved through reconfigurable and flexible devices and their hardware and software integration and control For this reason, significant efforts should be focused on the conception and development of innovative devices to cope with the continuous downscaling and increasing variety of the products in this growing field. In this context, this paper presents the design and development of a multi-mode hybrid micro-gripper devoted to manipulate and assemble a wide range of micro- and meso-SMT components with different dimensions and proprieties. It exploits two different handling technologies: the vacuum and friction.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design of a Multi-Mode Hybrid Micro-Gripper for Surface Mount Technology Component Assembly

Fontana,

Iacono,

Negri

et al. 2023

Micromachines

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Controllable Droplet Splitting with Parallel-Plate Optoelectrowetting Chips

Gao,

Zheng,

Liu

et al. 2025

Langmuir

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Investigations into Capillary Forces and Capillary Rise in a Three-Finger Microgripper and a Plate: Numerical Simulations and Experimental Validation

Xu,

Fan,

Gao

et al. 2024

Micromachines

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The assembly and position adjustment of micro-components have wide applications in micro-electromechanical systems, wafer packaging and biomedicine. However, current single-finger microgrippers only allow for the pickup and release of micro-components. In the present study, a three-finger capillary microgripper was developed to pick up, release and adjust the position of micro-components. The capillary force and the capillary rise generated by the capillary bridge were investigated by simulation and experiments. A simulation model was set up by the minimum energy method. On the established experimental platform, capillary forces were measured at different separation distances. When the volume was 0.9 μL, the maximum capillary forces gained from the capillary bridge model and experiments were 95.2 μN and 96.0 μN, respectively. A comparison of the capillary bridge models and the experimental results of the capillary forces demonstrate the reliability of the capillary bridge models. The influences of various parameters were investigated in detail by the capillary bridge model. The results demonstrate that when the side of the probe is hydrophilic, the variations in the capillary force with various factors such as separation distance and capillary bridge volume is non-monotonic, which is caused by the restriction of the probe edge.

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Capillary forces and capillary bridges between a three-finger microgripper and a plate

Cited by 3 publications

References 37 publications

Design of a Multi-Mode Hybrid Micro-Gripper for Surface Mount Technology Component Assembly

Design of a Multi-Mode Hybrid Micro-Gripper for Surface Mount Technology Component Assembly

Controllable Droplet Splitting with Parallel-Plate Optoelectrowetting Chips

Investigations into Capillary Forces and Capillary Rise in a Three-Finger Microgripper and a Plate: Numerical Simulations and Experimental Validation

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