As smartphone manufacturing continues to pursue higher production efficiency and precision, automating the handling of metal phone frames has become an essential part of modern production lines.Although metal phone frames appear rigid, they present several handling challenges:

• Thin-wall aluminum or stainless-steel structures can deform under excessive clamping force.
• Cosmetic surfaces must remain free of scratches or dents.
• High-speed production requires multiple parts to be transferred in one cycle.
• Parts are densely arranged inside trays, leaving limited gripping space.

Traditional mechanical grippers often require custom jaws for each frame size, while vacuum suction cups struggle to maintain stable gripping due to the open-frame geometry and limited suction area.This is where a soft robotic gripper offers significant advantages.

A smartphone manufacturer needed an automated solution for transferring metal phone middle frames from a tray into a machining fixture.Application Requirements

• Workpiece: Metal smartphone middle frame
• Feeding method: Tray loading
• Gripping method: External gripping
• Pick-and-place: Tray to fixture
• Quantity per cycle: 4 phone frames simultaneously
• Requirement: Stable gripping without scratching the cosmetic surface while maintaining high production efficiency.

To meet these requirements, Rochu engineers designed a multi-gripper soft robotic end effector capable of gripping four metal phone frames simultaneously.Instead of using rigid fingers that concentrate force on small contact points, the soft gripper uses compliant gripping fingers that automatically adapt to slight dimensional tolerances while distributing gripping force evenly.The process is straightforward:

1. The robot moves above the tray.
2. Four soft grippers simultaneously grip the outer edges of the phone frames.
3. The robot lifts all four frames securely.
4. The robot transfers them to the fixture.
5. The grippers release the parts accurately for the next machining process.

The entire handling cycle is completed smoothly without damaging the product surface.