Robotic electrical wire gripping solution for automated stripping and splicing or welding

A robotic wire gripper for gripping segments of sheathed electrical wire and presenting them to a splicing or welding machine, the wire gripper comprising:

• a comb-like clamping wall structure comprising a series of parallel longitudinally extending and transversely spaced clamping walls, each pair of adjacent clamping walls forming a wire receiving passageway in which a wire segment can be accommodated, the clamping walls being individually linearly movable along a transverse direction so that the pairs of adjacent clamping walls form releasable jaws for releasably gripping a wire segment near a pre-stripped end thereof;
• at least one controllable actuator for automated actuation of the clamping walls of the comb-like clamping wall structure in the transverse direction;
• a robot arm to which the comb-like wall structure and the actuator are fixed;
• and
• a controller programmed to cause:
• controlled displacement of the wire gripper by the robot arm towards a wire holder in which are accommodated a plurality of pre-stripped wire segments aligned in a row,
• controlled raking of the wire segments by the comb-like clamping wall structure such that each wire segment is disposed into an associated wire receiving passageway between a respective pair of spaced apart clamping walls,
• controlled and releasable gripping of each of the wire segments between a pair of adjacent clamping walls, by reducing mutual spacing between all pairs of adjacent clamping walls through actuation of the actuator,
• simultaneous controlled extraction by the robot arm of all the wire segments from a wire support once the wire segments are pressed by the clamping walls of the gripper while an end part of the sheath of the wire segments is retained in the wire support, so that the wires are all stripped at the same time when they are withdrawn from a wire support by the gripper, and
• the presentation, by the robot arm, of the stripped wire segments still gripped in the comb-like clamping wall structure to the splicing or welding machine away from the wire holder, which preserves the longitudinal alignment and parallel extension of the wire segments.