Best open hardware gripper or robot arm for microplate handling?

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Hi All

Does anyone have recommendations for open hardware grippers or robot arms for microplate handling that they have personally built and used?

There are a few options out there and I would really appreciate some well-informed recommendations!

Jenny

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Not truly open source… End effector from Festo is fairly cost effective and CAD is available if you need to manufacture it yourself: https://www.festo.com/us/en/p/gripper-jaws-id_DHAS_GG/
Pairing that with the servo gripper from annin robotics got us pretty far until we upgraded to a closed source gripper that also had rotary motion. https://www.anninrobotics.com/product-page/servo-gripper-parts-kit

I have two AR4 MK2 arms which we used for moving plates off of a liquid handler into a spectrophotometer or shaker.

Brian

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We tried integrating a gripper into the Opentrons ot2. I broke my leg, so cannot continue now, but mechanics are mostly ready :slight_smile:

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I’m interested too :slight_smile:

I’ve not spotted a microplate gripping tool, only this one for the smaller petri dishes: GitHub - dr3y/BioPick: diy colony picking robot

I printed and assembled it it, and the mechanism works fine. Adapting it to manipulate well-plates would be rather trivial.

I have not had time to fit it to pipettin’ and use it though, so I can’t really say how reliable it is.

Here is my build:

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Would you be interested in sharing STEP files for your design?

I’d like to reproduce it, but couldn’t open the “inventor” files in the repo with FreeCAD.

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You can upload that to Fusion360 if you’Re in a hurry. I don’t have autodesk with me right now :wink:

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No rush here, I’ll wait for the STEP file if that’s ok. :slight_smile:

If I can manufacture it I’ll try to reproduce.

A side note: I’d recommend checking out the latest releases of FreeCAD 1.0. It’s much nicer now and getting better, If you’re interested in a nice and free CAD software.

Edit: I’d mentioned Ondsel and its cloud, but it has recently closed its doors. :cry:

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I forgot about Thor: http://thor.angel-lm.com/

Haven’t built one though. Just looks cool and open.

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Thanks so much for all of these suggestions, I am looking into them!

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Here is the online 3D render:

I have added the STP file too :slight_smile:

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Good luck!

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Awesome thanks a lot!

Here is a direct link for the interested: openUC2-OT2-PlateGripper/INVENTOR/OT2-Gripper V1-1 BG.stp at master · openUC2/openUC2-OT2-PlateGripper · GitHub (I couldn’t download it from the last link).

Have you found a need to correct the position due to the flex in the gripper arms? I’d expect the lids to displace along the “gripping direction” while being grabbed, because the arms are equal but only one of them moves.

BioPick’s design is symmetric, both of the arms move around a center point. But perhaps making the stationary arm rigid would solve the problem too.

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Hi everyone, I wanted to drop a related update.

A few of us in Tim’s Open Auto Club have applied to an experiment.com grant to integrate an OSH gripper to our lab robots (including an OT2).

Here is the link for the interested: Open, accessible robotic tools for the propagation of native and ecologically significant plants | Experiment

If you find the time to endorse the project in Experiment’s website, that would be great. Just reply here and I’ll send endorsement invites.

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