Platform for the food and beverage industry
Products are being packed more in Quadroseal and Doypack packages along the way. After all, they allow the product to be placed more visually on store shelves. For food manufacturers, however, it also means some extra handling, because for transport, these bags must first be placed in American boxes - and then on pallets. Alphatech Mechanical Engineering offers some compact automated solutions for this.
For an operator, filling and stacking are heavy, repetitive and all in all unergonomic operations. Moreover, they also involve a relatively high personnel cost. Smart automation, which at the same time takes into account the shortage of space that growing companies with increasing production lines are facing, is a welcome alternative.
The Packman Casepacker is a box erector, box filler and box sealer to pack bags into a box with great speed and minimum changeover times. To do this, the packing machine uses a sophisticated throwing technique. The products are placed on a conveyor belt via a robot, which brings the Quadroseal bags to the filling station. The way the conveyor then throws the product into the filling station determines the final position of the bag. If it does so quickly, the bags remain flat and are thus stacked flat on top of each other. On the other hand, if the conveyor slows down, the products will end up standing upright in the filling station and thus in the box. Moreover, the position and angle at which the robot positions the bag on the conveyor belt also affects the position of the bag in the filling station. Thus, three different stacking modes are ultimately possible, which can succeed each other without switching. In essence, methods can even be switched constantly and on the fly. Although this is usually not necessary in practice, it does illustrate how short the changeover time between two production runs can be. Selecting the recipe on the HMI is the only action that must be taken for a product change or stacking method.
The Packman Casepacker is a compact machine that can fit into any production environment. The machine is plug-and-play installable as a single rectangular block and fully adapts to a specified recipe thanks to 27 servomotors. The throwing technology allows products from a few grams to 5,000-gram bags to be processed without mechanical adjustment. In addition to an application as a stand-alone packaging machine, the Casepacker can also be easily combined with a palletizer such as palletizer Tina. With a base area of 3,500 x 3,500 mm and a height of 3,000 mm, this is an equally compact solution for efficient and fast palletizing up to a stack height of 2,400 mm.
The Tina 2M palletizer specializes in the automatic stacking of products on one or more euro or industrial pallets and can now also be used in areas with a minimum of -10 °C. The entire installation is built from standard industrial components in accordance with European machinery directives and consists of three basic components: the roller conveyor (product delivery), the palletizer (stacking) and the HMI console (operation). These components are mechanically connected to each other, ensuring that all parts are aligned. The integrated LED signalization always provides a clear view of the status of the machine. With Tina, the stacking pattern on the pallet is unlimited. The desired pattern is created by the operator via the intuitive control panel, using a coordinate system. Installation and processing speeds also run high: Tina has a constant production rate of 20 products per minute and a maximum payload of 300 kg. The speed and lifting force of any human operation cannot match this automation, with the result that Tina contributes to increasing production and directly reducing personnel costs.
