At the end of a shaping line operated by Eisenmann Maschinenbau KG in Böblingen, the shaped metal parts must be unloaded and stacked. Since these parts are not very rigid - some of them are very long and wide - manual handling presents many difficulties.

For this reason, Eisenmann installed a linear robot. For the reliable and safe handling of sheets of galvanized or stainless steel, this robot is equipped with a gripper with a width of 500 mm and a length of 6000 mm, on which 108 suction pads of the type FSGA (bellows-type suction pads with 1½ corrugations and a diameter of 50 mm) are mounted.

Several braces on the crossbeam of the gripper, together with the large number of suction pads, ensure that the metal sheets do not sag by more then four millimetres when they are lifted. The suction pads are supplied with vacuum by a pump on the crossbeam and a total of six independent vacuum circuits.

The size of sheet is detected by proximity switches integrated into special suction plates. The controller then activates only those vacuum circuits needed for a sheet of the detected size. Each suction pad is also equipped with a check valve to ensure that the other suction pads still generate a vacuum even if one or more suction pads are positioned over holes in the metal sheet.

In order to ensure that the suction pads maintain a good seal with the metal surface and thus generate a good vacuum even after long operating periods, they are made of the extremely wear-resistant material "Vulkollan".

For particularly wide and flexible sheets, the gripper has 18 additional suction pads which can be extended pneumatically to prevent bending of sheets with widths of up to 100 centimetres.

This is the only way of ensuring that such sheets can be transported and stacked without flexing and warping.