Magnatomic grip panel

Magnatomic grip panels, also known as magnatomic gription panels were a type of gripping panel used in the palms and inner surface of super tactical droids' hands. The grip panels enabled them to easily pick up and wield most weapons, tools, and equipment made for organic beings without dropping them. Magnatomic grip panels were also used in Phase I clone trooper armor to seal the plastoid-alloy plates of the armor to the underlying body glove.

Description

During the Clone Wars, a conflict between the Separatists and the Galactic Republic, the Republic's clone troopers' phase I armor, consisted of twenty form-fitting plastoid-alloy composite plates that were sealed to a temperature-control body glove via magnatomic gription panels.^[1]

Magnatomic grip panels were also used for the palms and inner surface of the Separatists' super tactical droids' hands. These sophisticated gripping panels enabled the droids to easily pick up and wield most weapons, tools, and equipment made for organic beings without dropping them. The grip panels were amongst the many improvements made to the super tactical droids' armor and limbs over their T-series predecessors.^[2] Super tactical droids such as General Kalani and Commander Aut-O used their grip panels to wield E-5 blaster rifles^[3]^[4] more effectively than the T-series units.^[2] The grip panels also allowed the super tactical droids to hold other droids in their hands, such as a buzz droid, like one droid who commanded a hijacked Venator-class Star Destroyer,^[5] sentient beings, such as the Zilkin Colonel Meebur Gascon, who was briefly held by Aut-O,^[4] as well as equipment such a datapad, which one droid who worked under Admiral Trench during the Battle of Anaxes held in its hands.^[6]

Aut-O used his^[7] grip panels to fight in hand-to-hand combat with Gascon, R2-D2, and D-Squad.^[4] The Carida super tactical droid and Kraken also used their grip panels to fight in hand-to-hand combat with R2-D2 and Anakin Skywalker respectively.^[5]^[8]

In 2 BBY,^[9] seventeen years after the Clone Wars officially ended,^[10] Kalani used his grip panels during the last battle of the Clone War to hold Clone Captain Rex's helmet in his hands after his forces captured Rex and the Spectres Kanan Jarrus, Ezra Bridger, and Garazeb Orrelios^[11] on the planet^[12] Agamar. Later in the mission, Kalani once again wielded an E-5 blaster rifle using his magnatomic grips, but Rex destroyed the blaster.^[11]

Behind the scenes

In the current Star Wars canon, magnatomic grip panels first appeared in Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones, where they sealed Phase I clone trooper armor to the underlying body gloves.^[13] The armor's grip panels were later identified in the 2015 reference book Ultimate Star Wars.^[14] In January 2018,^[15] the "Droid Directory" in De Agostini magazine's fifty-first issue of Star Wars: Build Your Own R2-D2, confirmed that magnatomic grip panels were also integrated into the hands of the Separatists' super tactical droids.^[2]

In the Star Wars Legends continuity, gription panels, also known as magnatomic grip panels, were a type of gription panel, that held the armor plating of clone troopers against their body gloves. They first appeared in the 2004 novel Republic Commando: Hard Contact, written by Karen Traviss.^[16]