Robot Tooling

One of the most important aspects of any automated process is tool selection, our experienced engineers design tooling specifically for the task require by each customer. CKF has a range of standard tooling designs to handle a large range of products, all of which can be developed to suit the needs of a specific operation, from single suction cup pick and place tools to servo driven mechanical case grippers and full layer palletising tools. Our tools are designed, manufactured and tested in house at CKF in Gloucester ensuring they are built to the highest of standards to survive the test of time in production.

Complex robotic tooling

Tooling can be simple vacuum pick up or complex vacuum tooling with segmented zoning for multi-drop applications, providing the product and application is suitable for the use of vacuum.

Bespoke mechanical grippers

Mechanical grippers are usually more bespoke due to either the nature of the products to be handled or for the operation or task that needs to be carried out by the robotic solution. These gripper solutions have included the separation of products, alignment of products or stacks, rotating of products or even multi-functional so that they can also include the picking of secondary items such as pallets or layer sheets.

In-house tooling design

Our design team develops concepts to suit the customers’ individual needs. The concepts are then modelled in our 3D design software where they can be stress tested using finite element analysis. Once a tool has been designed it can be imported into robot studio to simulate the robot cycle to ensure the cycle times and movements meet the specification.

Exhaustive testing

Finally once all assessments have been completed the tool can be released for manufacture, this method ensures we can build a suitable tool solution first time without the need to build and develop multiple models, saving costs on both materials