"It provides us with an efficiency gain of the packaging process while maintaining the same quality" is the comment of FruitMasters
Automatic packing of soft fruit into crates, boxes or trays
We recently installed 5 robot case loaders at Fruitmasters in Geldermalsen. They were looking to automate this part of the packing line. Until then, this was still done manually. We were asked to optimise this process and make it more efficient.
An employee places empty crates or boxes in stacks on the infeed conveyor. An automatic destacker then ensures that one box or crate at the time is placed in the conveyor section of the case loader. In the case loader, a robot fills the crates or boxes, but not before having checked the tray label. For this purpose, our case loaders are equipped with a camera scanner. If the label is incorrect, the tray is automatically removed from the line. If the tray has the correct label, it continues towards the robot's pick-up point.
We chose for a Fanuc delta robot for picking up and placing the trays. The grippers were developed in-house and tailor made to Fruitmasters' specifications and various packaging formats. Changing and controlling the programmes and loading patterns can be done via an easy-to-use touchscreen. The case loaders are now used for picking both small and large trays from, for example, 125-gram trays to 400 or 500-gram trays. The capacity is 75 packs per minute.
26 окт 2022
