MX Suction cup – also known as the #1 Item Picker

Piab designed the MX suction cup family for picking various objects made of different materials. This suction cup model was highly engineered with a soft and thin lip giving exceptional vacuum sealing capabilities. The MX cup is made of Duraflex^®, which is a material that features the elasticity of rubber and wear resistance of polyurethane. With this excellent design comes many, many advantages to this new solution.

The MX cup was primarily created for logistics, warehousing, e-commerce and recycling industries but has been used for various other industries. Specific applications where the MX cup has been known to excel are bin picking, order fulfillment, box depalletizing, parcel sorting and many others.

There are several advantages of utilizing the Piab MX suction cup for your application.

Here are a few that stand out:

AGV’s installation for deployment requires installation of navigation guides. These can sometimes require renovations that can be significant to the facility. From there, the navigation process is guided by magnetic strips or cables that will need to be installed on or under the floor. When it comes to flexibility of the patterns or workflow, it will entail repeating the deployment process which means installation of new navigation guides for the needed movements. If there are obstacles or objects in the way of an AGV, they will not be able to find a way around them. Lastly, the accessibility of AGV’s can be a bit troublesome because they typically require experts to configure or reconfigure the system.

Gripper change – Often times there is a need for changing over the gripper or suction cup to use for a different item through the automating process. This could be because of the material, size, weight or some other difference in the product. The MX gripper decreases the time that could be spent changing gripper or suction cup for each individual product in the application because of its versatility.

Energy saving – The engineered design for the MX model creates a hard seal while using a low-vacuum flow. This creates a more sustainable energy output even on difficult objects. In return, it makes it a perfect fit for a small vacuum system such as piCOBOT.

Low wrinkle impact – One of the most important parts of handling items throughout an automation process is keeping the integrity of the item. One advantage of the low vacuum level design of the MX model is avoiding denting or wrinkling of surfaces during transfer. This smart design also gives the possibility to re-cycle packages.

Durable material – Piab designed this suction cup family with the high longevity DURAFLEX®. This material features the elasticity of rubber, wear resistance of polyurethane and has great elastic memory. This means there are also “mark free” capabilities for your application.

This design comes in five sizes to fit your specific application best – 35, 42, 50, 57 and 65. All are compatible with MX piGRIP fittings and their features. Now that you understand how the MX suction cups are outstanding for picking various objects of different materials, we are excited to discuss how the MX suction cup can benefit your automated processes within your facility.  

Watch our video giving an depth look at the new MX suction cup here: