WEPG Series

In highly automated modern factories, industrial robots tirelessly perform tasks like grasping, handling, and assembly. However, within these seemingly seamless processes often lies a critical efficiency bottleneck: after being grasped, workpieces often need to be transported to a dedicated, stationary weighing station for weight inspection. This “extra” step not only consumes valuable cycle time but also increases equipment costs and floor space requirements, while introducing potential risks of errors and damage during material transfer.

Is it possible to combine “grasping” and “weighing” into one action, allowing robots to perform high-precision weight data acquisition instantly while handling? This has long been a dream for manufacturers, especially in industries with strict weight requirements. Today, the answer provided by Suzhou Junduo Robotics Co., Ltd. is revolutionizing production lines with its groundbreaking solution—the WEPG Weighing Gripper.

What is the WEPG Weighing Gripper? – Redefining the Robot End Effector

The WEPG Weighing Gripper is, as the name suggests, an intelligent robot end effector that integrates high-precision weighing functionality with a high-performance electric gripper. It is not merely a simple combination of a gripper and a scale pan, but rather a deep mechatronic design that seamlessly embeds miniaturized, high-precision load cells into the gripper’s body structure.

In essence, the WEPG Weighing Gripper redefines the very meaning of “grasping.” The mission of a traditional gripper is to “safely grasp and move an object”; the mission of the WEPG is to “intelligently perceive, grasp, and acquire the object’s key data (weight).” It enables the robot arm to obtain the precise weight of the workpiece in real-time—right at the moment of grasping, during movement, or at any desired point before placement—achieving true “grasp-weigh-data log-place” one-stop automated operation.

Core Technical Breakthroughs:

1. High-Precision Strain Gauge Sensors: Utilizes aerospace-grade weighing sensor technology, capable of quickly stabilizing and outputting accurate weight signals even under intense mechanical motion and high-frequency vibration interference.
2. Advanced Sensor Fusion Algorithms: The built-in intelligent processing unit can filter out noise caused by robot motion acceleration and mechanical vibrations in real-time, ensuring the stability and reliability of weighing data.
3. Integrated Structural Design: Integrates sensing, driving, and control into a compact unit with excellent structural rigidity, avoiding accuracy loss and reliability issues associated with external or split designs.

Why WEPG? – A Solution Targeting Core Industry Pain Points

The emergence of the WEPG Weighing Gripper is not for technology’s sake, but directly addresses the core pain points in the automation upgrade of multiple industries.

1. Lithium-ion Battery Production: The Lifeline of Safety and Quality Traceability
Lithium battery manufacturing is an industry with extremely high requirements for weight accuracy and full-process quality traceability. The electrolyte filling volume of a battery cell directly affects its performance, safety, and lifespan.

• Pain Point: Traditional offline weighing requires moving cells, risking electrolyte spillage, contamination, and safety hazards; delayed or erroneous data entry breaks the quality traceability chain.
• WEPG Solution:
  • Inline Precision Measurement: After filling, the robot directly uses the WEPG gripper to grasp the cell and verifies the filling volume with high precision during transfer, eliminating the need for a dedicated weighing station and significantly reducing cycle time.
  • 100% Data Association: The weight data of each cell is linked in real-time with its QR code via the PLC or MES system, building a complete, unalterable quality data package for full life-cycle traceability.
  • Prevents Contamination and Waste: Reducing handling steps directly lowers the risk of electrolyte spillage, enhancing production safety and material utilization.

2. Food and Pharmaceutical Industries: The Guardian of Compliance and Cost Control
In the food and pharmaceutical sectors, there are strict regulations on the net weight and fill volume of packaged products. Any underweight product can lead to serious compliance issues.

• Pain Point: Manual sampling is inefficient and prone to missed inspections; traditional inline checkweighers occupy significant space and lack adaptability to various product shapes.
• WEPG Solution:
  • 100% Full Inspection: The robot can grasp and weigh every box of medicine or bag of food on the conveyor line, ensuring nothing is missed.
  • Seamless Line Integration: As an end-of-arm tool, it requires no changes to the existing line layout, offering high flexibility to easily adapt to flexible production needs for high-mix, low-volume batches.
  • Real-time Sorting & Rejection: When an underweight or overweight product is detected, the system can immediately command the robot to place it into a reject bin, enabling real-time quality control.

3. Chemical and Cosmetics Industries: The Precise Steward of Formulation and Dispensing
For filling high-viscosity materials like pastes and liquids, or dispensing raw materials with strict ratio requirements, weight is a critical process parameter.

• Pain Point: Drifting accuracy of filling equipment is hard to detect; raw material dispensing requires secondary verification, which is inefficient.
• WEPG Solution:
  • Inline Calibration & Monitoring: Weighs filled buckets or bottles in real-time, providing feedback to the filling equipment for precision compensation, forming a closed-loop control.
  • Accurate Dispensing: Precisely measures the amount of raw materials during grasping and dispensing, ensuring formula accuracy.

Beyond Tradition: The Overwhelming Advantages of the WEPG Weighing Gripper

Compared to the traditional “gripper + independent scale” solution, the WEPG Weighing Gripper builds a comprehensive competitive advantage.

• Ultimate Efficiency: Eliminates intermediate handling and waiting steps, potentially increasing production cycle time by over 30%.
• Space Saving: Saves valuable floor space by removing the dedicated weighing station and scale.
• Accurate & Seamless Data: Achieves real-time binding of “one-item, one-code, one-weight,” eliminating manual entry errors and broken traceability chains, providing a high-quality data foundation for smart manufacturing and big data analysis.
• High Reliability & Low Maintenance: The integrated design reduces external connections and moving parts, lowering failure rates. Its robust design can withstand harsh industrial environments.
• Superior Return on Investment (ROI): While the unit cost may be higher than a standard gripper, the comprehensive benefits gained through increased efficiency, saved space, reduced defects, and lower labor costs typically lead to a rapid ROI.

In-Depth Analysis of Practical Application Scenarios

Let’s delve into a specific scenario to see the WEPG in action.

Scenario: Post-Electrolyte Filling Process in a High-End Power Battery Plant

1. Grasp: A six-axis robot equipped with the WEPG Weighing Gripper picks up a freshly filled battery cell from the filling station.
2. Weigh & Calculate: During the robot’s movement towards the aging rack, the WEPG gripper performs the weight measurement within milliseconds. The system automatically calculates: Current Weight - Tare Weight = Net Filling Weight.
3. Data Binding & Decision: The net filling weight data is transmitted in real-time via a communication interface (e.g., EtherCAT/Profinet) to the MES system, where it is bound to the cell’s unique ID. Simultaneously, the system judges whether the weight is within the allowed process tolerance.
4. Sort & Place:
   • Qualified Product: The robot places the cell precisely into a designated slot on the aging rack.
   • Disqualified Product (Under/Over Filled): The robot, following the MES instruction, automatically places this cell into a nearby rework or scrap collection area.
5. Reporting & Optimization: The entire process data is recorded and analyzed, generating Statistical Process Control (SPC) charts to help process engineers continuously optimize filling parameters and improve overall production quality.

Selection and Integration: How to Incorporate WEPG into Your Production Line

Integrating the WEPG Weighing Gripper is a straightforward and efficient process.

1. Selection: Choose the appropriate WEPG model based on your workpiece weight, accuracy requirements, stroke, and mounting interface.
2. Mechanical Installation: Mount it onto the robot wrist via a flange, just like any standard electric gripper.
3. Electrical Connection: Connect the power supply and communication bus (typically supporting mainstream industrial protocols like EtherCAT, CAN, Modbus).
4. Software Configuration: Easily read the weight data and integrate it into your control logic using the provided function blocks or library files in the robot controller or PLC.
   Junduo Robotics typically provides comprehensive technical support to ensure fast and seamless integration.

WEPG Weighing Gripper – A Key Step Towards Industry 4.0

In the grand vision of Industry 4.0 and Smart Manufacturing, data is the new oil, and efficiency is the perpetual pursuit. Suzhou Junduo’s WEPG Weighing Gripper is a perfect embodiment of this philosophy. It is not just a tool; it is a data acquisition probe, a lever for process optimization. It seamlessly integrates a previously isolated, offline inspection step into a continuous, inline production process, breaking down information silos and bridging the physical and digital worlds.

For any enterprise committed to enhancing production efficiency, strengthening quality control, and building a digital transparent factory, investing in innovative technologies like the WEPG Weighing Gripper is no longer an option, but a necessity to maintain a leading edge in fierce market competition. It represents a new era: an era where every grasp of a robot is not just a transfer of force, but the beginning of intelligent perception and decision-making.

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