• capyllary forces
• handling
• microhandling
• forze di capillarità
• micromanipolazione
• manipolazione

In the assembly of microproducts the grasping-releasing task is fundamental. At micro-scale, however, assembly is a critical operation, and standard assembly techniques cannot generally be applied, so several innovative grasping methods have been developed. Among various grasping principles, capillary is one of the most flexible and reliable to grasp microparts but the releasing is often very critical. In this paper a novel releasing strategy that exploits the capillary force also to release the micropart is proposed. This new grasping-releasing method exploits the different surface tension of two liquids to achieve different capillary force in the grasping and in the releasing phases. A mechanical system that uses this strategy has been realized and the images captured during the tests have been analysed by an artificial vision software application. The preliminary results show a good reliability and precision in the releasing task. A theoretical and numerical model has been developed and the results have been successfully compared with the experimental ones.