With consumer buying trends influencing greater product diversification, production and packing facilities throughout the UK and Europe are increasingly leaning towards flexible robots that straddle several pick and place lines.
As testament, Pacepacker Services reports that enquiries for a single robot that can straddle or move between infeed conveyors have doubled in the last 12 months as customers move away from traditional application-specific case loading cells.
Addressing the issue of frequent product changeovers, the FANUC M10 series can pack anything from cardboard cartons of frozen fish portions to thermoformed trays of fresh meat or sacks of potatoes into shelf ready cases and trays. This robot can also stack filled boxes, trays and sacks on pallets. “The versatility of the M10 robotic arms enable fast adaptability to any case loading application,” emphasises Pacepacker’s Commercial & Information Systems Manager, Paul Wilkinson. “The system can also be customised to any most types of conveyors and food factory configuration and can even be integrated with a case erection/sealing system or bulk display loading unit.”
For increased flexibility, this high-speed robot can be fitted with different multi-purpose end effectors to suit the application and can be easily moved to other production areas to suit business demands, boosting a packer’s investment even further.
With a payload of 12kg, and capable of picking and packing up to 80 items per minute, M10 robots can be fitted with any end effector to suit the application. There are more than 80 to choose from, including mechanical grippers for gently cradling fresh poly bags of produce, or delicately transferring potatoes and freshly harvested root vegetables into bulk display units, to suction cups for loading tubs and pots into retail ready trays.
“Because of the choice of end-effectors available, we can select a multifunctional tool that automatically adjusts to all of the functions the robot arm has to perform,” continues Paul. Adding to its flexibility, 100’s of product variations* can be programmed and stored by the robot. And, even if operatives need to change the end-effector for a specific pack format, the autotool changeover means this can be done in just a few minutes, minimising production downtime.
“Given that a large volume of packers today serve a wide customer base and have to accommodate peak demands, case loading robots increasingly need to be able to react swiftly to varied products and packaging sizes,” explains Paul. “We are increasingly building systems for customers that flex to the needs of a business and as specialists in automated systems we can design or select a multifunctional end effector to eliminate the need for changeovers.”
