Does not release what has been taken

1

Hey there. Is there a possibility to reverse the air flow of the pump in order to release taken items? I have the metalic uArm and once the pump helds (sucks) an item it doesnt release it even after turning off the pump. Does someone have the same issues. I use the arm to remove plastic plate tops fro agar plates.

Thank you for your answers.

2

The pump is used to maintain the vacuum in the system which is also held with a small valve. In order to release an object, you must first turn off the pump and then release the valve. For Arduino, your release function might look like this:

digitalWrite(PUMP_EN, LOW);
digitalWrite(VALVE_EN, HIGH);
delay(200);
digitalWrite(VALVE_EN,LOW);

There is also a uArmClass::pumpOff() function as part of the UArmForArduino firmware that will do this. Note that it is best to reset the valve back to the LOW state once release is complete.

3

Answering to your question there is not a way to reverse airflow. There is a valve that opens the vacuum tube for it to have ambience pressure and not a negative pressure.

I came across the same problem when using the command uArmClass. pumpOff (). After some research I came to the conclusion it wasn’t opening the valve long enough
.
To fix it, I just run the pump command uArmClass.pumpOff () 4 times with a delay of 20ms:

  uarm.pumpOff();
  delay(20);
  uarm.pumpOff();
  delay(20);
  uarm.pumpOff();
  delay(20);
  uarm.pumpOff();