Case Study: Harvestance achieves lighter, stronger custom vacuum grippers with Markforged 3D printing

Harvestance cuts gripper weight by 80% with Markforged

Harvestance, a design and engineering services company specializing in additive manufacturing, faced challenges in producing robotic vacuum grippers for their clients. Their customers needed lightweight, strong, and highly customized grippers, but traditional CNC-machined aluminum versions were too heavy, limiting robot payloads, and were costly and slow to produce for custom jobs. They turned to Markforged composite 3D printing technology to address these pain points.

By utilizing Markforged printers and materials like Onyx reinforced with continuous carbon fiber, Harvestance implemented a solution that integrated vacuum channels directly into the gripper design. This approach resulted in an 80% reduction in weight compared to commercial grippers and slashed delivery time from two weeks to just two days. The Markforged technology provided the necessary strength and stiffness without requiring post-processing, allowing Harvestance to optimize performance and expand their end-of-arm tooling business.

Harvestance