Page 16 - Packaging News magazine March_April 2023

COVER STORY
Instant palletising comes to Australia
With a substantial CAPEX budget, larger FMCG manufacturers can access high-speed, high- pay-load mechanical or industrial-robotic palletisers. But until now, there hasn’t been a lot on offer for SME operations. Foodmach director Phil Biggs tells us why this is set to change.
THERE IS A continual expectation placed on line managers to increase production rates and reduce over- heads and costs. Automated palletising is an excellent way to get around labour supply and occupational health and safety issues, while improving output and quality control. However, it’s expen- sive, requires a fair bit of conveying and floor space, and – unless it comes with pallet programming software – a real headache to introduce new products and pallet configurations.
SMEs NEED DECENTRALISED PALLETISING
A centralised palletising system makes sense in larger factories where a mul- titude of conveying systems can be accommodated. Smaller spaces nat- urally limit the use of conveyors. Introducing centralised palletising may also require a complete reconfiguration of the work floor. That kind of time and money is not an option for everyone.
SMEs often produce a large number of SKUs of relatively low volume – and so would benefit from a palletising solution that’s easy to move around and set up, according to what’s being produced. The optimum solution for smaller manufac- turers would offer absolute flexibility, be easily deployed (plug and play), and take up about the same amount of space as manual palletising.
ROBOT POWER
Robots offer accuracy and consistency and support overall quality control. They provide reliable productivity around the clock, 365 days a year, without the need for overtime pay or supervision. The effectiveness of robotic palletising is well proven.
Cobots, or collaborative robots, are smaller, safer robots with a lower payload, designed to work alongside
Above: The instant palletiser can be used with AMR technology.
Left: Simple touch screen set-up means no teaching or programming is required.
set-up and is simply wheeled into place and connected to air and 240v power. Once case and pallet sizes are entered on the 13" interface, the built-in soft- ware does the rest. It requires zero programming, training, calibration or technical skills to operate. Nor does it require safety fencing.
Instant Palletiser has an effective maximum case payload of 18kg and stacks pallets up to 1550mm high at rates of up to 10.5 cycles per minute. An enhanced option allows stacking of 2500mm tall pallets at rates up to eight cycles per minute. A skewed conveyor ensures all incoming cases are aligned consistently for the cobot’s gripper. Inbuilt sensors confirm the pallets are in position. The entire footprint is 3607 x 2636mm, including two pallets.
CONTINUOUS OPERATION
Instant Palletiser can stack at two pal- let locations on either side of the base. The benefit of this is that an operator can remove a completed pallet while the cobot continues to palletise a secondary pallet without interruption. Or it can be configured to stack two different SKUs to each pallet location simultaneously. A third option opens the opportunity of
humans. They’re ideal for repetitive tasks that require dexterity and flex- ibility and can be easily programmed.
Cobots are an effective solution to injuries caused by repetition – the ideal work assistant. So, it makes sense to recruit adaptable, compact cobots to minimise bottlenecks in smaller pack- aging lines, in the process ensuring that products arrive at their destination in good shape.
ENTER THE COBOT PALLETISER
Compact and mobile, a new cobot-pow- ered palletiser, or ‘Instant Palletiser’, has just been launched in Australia by Foodmach’s Technology Products division. It requires little in the way of
Palletising in 5 easy steps
1. Roll Instant Palletiser into place and connect to power and air
2. Power up the unit
3. Enter case dimensions and weight and select pallet type
4. Let the automated pallet pattern generator create the stacking strategy 5. Start palletising
16 ❙ MARCH – APRIL 2023
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