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Chapter 04 · Applications · 05
Robotics & automation
Grippers that hold through a power cut, tooling that changes itself, parts that index themselves — magnetism as the factory’s quiet actuator.
Automation values magnets for what they don’t need: no air lines, no power to hold, no wear surfaces. Switchable and coded magnets turn that passive grip into a controllable, addressable one.
OnRobot MG10 magnetic gripper shipping
A robot end-effector that grips ferrous parts and — unlike a vacuum or servo gripper — keeps holding through a power loss. Fail-safe by physics.
Magswitch switchable EOAT shipping
Switchable-magnet end-of-arm tooling in automotive welding cells, cutting compressed-air use by ~90% versus vacuum — “programmable in time” magnetism, the complement to coding’s “programmable in space.”
Electropermanent quick-change tooling shipping
Magnetic quick-change plates swap end-effectors and fixtures in seconds, no bolts.
Self-aligning assembly & part indexing illustrative
Industrial Magnetics’ SmartMag and Polymagnet keyed pairs exist as products for self-locating fixturing; documented factory-line deployments are not on record.
MIT M-Blocks self-reconfiguring robots demonstrated
Research cubes that jump, roll and self-assemble using internal flywheels and face magnets — the self-assembling-toy dream, in a lab.
The takeaway. Fullerton’s founding image was parts that assemble themselves. Robotics is where that image is being built — mostly today with switchable magnets, with coded self-alignment as the obvious, still-unclaimed refinement.