Six-axis force and torque (F/T) sensors measure force and torque in many applications including electrical and mechanical assembly, product testing, robot material handling and medical research.
ATI Industrial Automation is one of the largest supplier of 6-axis F/T sensors. The ATI system incorporates a monolithic instrumented transducer which uses silicon strain gauges for excellent noise immunity, high stiffness and increased overload protection.
These F/T sensors give robot and research applications the ability to sense forces and moments applied in six degrees of freedom (Fx, Fy, Fz, Tx, Ty and Tz). The transducer mounts behind the application tooling and is connected to its support electronics via a small-diameter, high-flex, long-life cable. All models are available with either DAQ-F/T or Controller-F/T interfaces.
The DAQ-F/T system allows the transducer to connect to an analogue data acquisition (DAQ) card making it easy to read sensor data from a PC or robot controller and software provided converts the strain gauge data to force/torque data. The Controller-F/T system processes the strain gauge data and outputs both serial and analogue force/torque data.
The type Nano-17, at 17mm diameter, is the smallest F/T sensor in the ATI range and has application in dental research, robotic hand research, robotic surgery and finger force research. At the other end of the scale, with 254mm diameter, is the Omega-250 which is commonly used for product testing, force feedback and telerobotics. With 11 models to select from, virtually any F/T sensing requirement can be handled by the ATI range.