Hello. I've been playing around with a UR5 and dual Hand-E grippers for a pick and place application. 

The previous engineer wrote the program without setting TCP's nor the CoG. Everything seems to work.

We added custom fingers 7" long (~18cm). They protrude in all 3 axes. It looks like Wolverine in action. Crude drawing attached...


I have the fingers opposed because they get in the way at certain stations when on same side. 

Question is...will setting TCP's prevent the robot from hitting the fingers against itself? Basically, will the robot know that the fingers are way out there and automatically move in such a way that prevents the fingers from hitting the robot arm? Or is that not one of the functions of setting TCP's? 

It's a pick and place application with 7 stations and full 360° movement in no particular order. 

I'm a week on the project so will have more questions I'm sure. 

It won't guarantee the robot won't hit itself but it will definitely change the motion.  The bigger advantage of setting proper TCP settings is that if you decide at some point that you want to change the finger design slightly you can update the TCP and the program will adapt all of the motion to the new TCP settings.

CoG being set correctly will ensure that the robot is calculating the expected power required to perform a move and will make for cleaner motion and fewer protective stops.  Also, makes free drive much smoother as the robot knows how to counterbalance the load that its holding and where gravity is working on the end effector.