Patent ID: 8104807

Claim:
A pneumatic needle gripper, comprising: a gripper body; a pneumatic piston prone to strokes between a retrograde position and an advanced position in a chamber defined by the gripper body; two slides on board the gripper body each carrying at least one pair of parallel gripper needles, wherein the needles on one slide are facing towards the needles on the other, both slanting and converging towards the frontal plane of the gripper body, and wherein said slides in connection with the pneumatic piston strokes are movable simultaneously in opposite directions between an idle position, wherein the needles of both slides are retrograded compared to said frontal plane and at a distance one from the other, and an active position, wherein the needles of the two slides are advanced to cross one with the other and emerge from said frontal plane through respective guide bores slanting to penetrate into an element of penetrable material to be collected and moved; an adjustment device associated coaxially to the pneumatic piston and interacting with the gripper body to vary the stroke of said piston in the direction of the movement of the slides, consequently of the gripper needles, towards the active position and to adjust the protrusion of said gripper needles from said frontal plane depending on the thickness of the element to be collected and moved.