Suppress mate in animation?

I need to animate a robot and show that robot moving a piece of material from one location then dropping that piece of material in another location. I had hoped to do this by suppressing the mate between the robot and the part so that when the robot retracts the part will stay but I cannot find a way to suppress a mate at a particular point during the animation.

I am using sw2007sp4.0.


Is this possible?

Thanks,

Sam