GRABO Quality Engineering

GRABO branded technology strives to make heavy lifting easy. We’re actively disrupting the international handheld vacuum suction cup industry with each innovation. Top line electric suction cup tools from GRABO are changing the way people lift and move. We know this is a positive change, no matter where our customers are based in the world.

Nemo tools are innovative, disruptive, and meticulously designed and tested. We know what builders and fitters are looking for in top technology. Making bigger jobs more comfortable and more flexible - that’s our ongoing goal.

We’re proud to host R&D engineers all over the world. From Shenzen to San Francisco, Israel to Hong Kong, we are very widely spread. Our R&D experts live and breathe new tool innovations. We never stop looking for trailblazing ways to make everyday processes that bit simpler!

Here are a few innovations we’re known for:

• We work with high-end technology. Our tools make use of marine level sealing and fabrication hardware. We also use electronics innovations typically found in drone production.
• Our vacuum lifting technology is fully patented. We develop unique, leading tools for anti-slip grip and effortless lifting of a massive array of material.
• Our long reach extensions help to make lifting ergonomically a breeze.
• We’re developing intelligent tools, too. Our products arrive with digital sensors to advise of lifting capacities.
• You’re also able to control multiple GRABOs from afar with remote add-ons.
• We also support high flow vacuum pumping—great lifting support for dry cast materials and porous tiles.
• You’ll even be able to control GRABO tech via app and Bluetooth very soon indeed!

We never stop innovating. Our products are constantly improving, continuously disrupting, and perform to the highest possible standards. Quality end-user experiences are, of course, what we strive for in all that we do.

Porous surfaces are some of the most difficult to lift and move. This is because this type of surface or panel contains small holes or gaps that allow air to travel through. For example, you may expect a porous surface to be made from wood, concrete or even ceramics. The fact is, many suction and lifting tools cannot hold or handle porous surfacing as they cannot complete a seal.

Standard suction, while working well with clean, flat surfaces, rarely copes well with porosity. Even if spaces are microscopic, seals are complicated to maintain. While you may adhere to a suction cup for a few seconds or more, the hold will not persist.

Vacuum cavities are complicated to manage with standard suction. That’s why GRABO vacuum lifter technology is leading the industry.

We design tools that benefit from patented air balancing. Crucially, this means a GRABO tool will produce more air through lifting than will expect to escape through holes and spaces. This requires a lot of interesting calculations, as it is more than a simple ratio or balance! However, at base level, it is a case of pumping out more air than your porous surface stands to lose.

We design our suction cup tools based on the methodologies of Murray’s Law. Essentially, this means we consider mass variation, power transfer and molecular diffusion. The equations are often fairly complex - but GRABO engineers are immensely skilled at this level of analytics.

Engineers design tools based on your ‘flow rate’ (air transfer) and surface area in question. By multiplying the flow rate by the surface area, we learn how powerful our pumps need to be.

We’ve designed and engineered our tools to work with some of the most awkward and/or complex surfaces. If you’re intrigued to learn more, take a look at our table below!

The flow rate required from GRABO to keep a strong vacuum seal against a porous surface, is generally described by a formula of generalized Murray’s law

where the X is the ratio of mass variation during mass transfer in the parent pore, the exponent α is dependent on the type of the transfer. For laminar flow α = 3; for turbulent flow α = 7/3; for molecule or ionic diffusion α = 2; etc

The flow rate is than multiplied by the surface area under the seal for a given pressure differential, which results in the flow rate and power requirement from GRABO’s internal electric pump.

However, as interesting as the engineering is, users of GRABO do not need to worry about the science. All you need to know, is the GRABO is designed to work well on some of the most common porous materials in the industry.

* For specific max lifting force capabilities, refer to the table “Lifting force under different conditions” table at the bottom of this page.

How Vacuum lifting works:

Pressure and force are related, and so you can calculate one if you know the other by using the physics equation, P = F/A. Because pressure is force divided by area, its meter-kilogram-second (MKS) units are newtons per square meter, or N/m2.