Abstract—Robotics research has gotten a lot of attention in recent years, thanks to the growing development and commercialization of industrial and service robots. For experimental investigations, the bulk of researchers working on robot grasping and object manipulation use commercially available robot manipulators outfitted with various end effectors. However, commercially available robotic grippers are sometimes costly and difficult to customize for individual applications. This work will offer a low-cost three-finger robotic gripper platform for research and teaching applications to expand the range of robotic end effectors freely available to researchers and Industrial users. The gripper’s 3D design model is given and produced utilizing a few 3D-printed components and an off-the-shelf servo actuator. 3 fingers, a gear train mechanism, and a motor drive are detailed in detail, along with an overall gripper assembly design, followed by drawings and a discussion of gripper gripping performance and prospective gripper platform adjustments.

Keywords—3-Finger Gripper, design, 3D printing, gear, simulation

Cite: Mohammad Al Mashagbeh, Migdad Tamimi, and Romil Al-Adwan, "Design of a Light-Weight, Low-Cost Three-Finger End Effector," International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics Research, Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 96-102, 2025. doi: 10.18178/ijmerr.14.2.96-102

Copyright © 2025 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).