Robot revolution ramps up

David Marshall, business manager, robotics at ABB Manufacturing Automation, a leading UK robot supplier, believes the biggest driver behind the increasing packaging sector take-up of robots in the last 3-5 years has been the need for manufacturing and packaging operations to become leaner, meaner and faster to satisfy increasingly demanding retailer deadlines.

This constant challenge will often mean installing a robot to speed up labour-intensive, repetitive tasks like placing biscuit packs into corrugated cases – jobs previously undertaken manually more slowly and with potentially more breakage by hand or by "conventional" end-of-line machinery.

Marshall says: "Robots also offer significant health and safety advantages by taking on tedious, repetitive assembly and filling procedures where employee concentration can lapse."

Traditionally, like many of its competitors, ABB Manufacturing Automation has seen much of the demand for its robotic equipment from the automotive sector (this still accounts for over 70% of its sales). "Packaging is not yet a major focus for us in the UK," concedes Marshall. "However, its importance is growing, particularly as a significant UK car manufacturing industry no longer exists."

Marshall believes that, until a few years ago, the high cost of robotics was the main deterrent to packaging and processing operations investing in this machinery.

However, as prices have (in some cases) halved and retailer customers demanded faster delivery, smaller batch sizes, and lower prices, brand owners and their packer-fillers have increasingly recognised robotics' benefits will outweigh their costs.

ABB has an extensive robot portfolio, selling many of its systems via channel partners Sewtec, Bradman Lake, AEW Delford, RTS, Robotic Solutions and Luma Automation. One highly successful ABB packaging robot is the FlexPicker pick and place system, comprising the IRB 340 industrial parallel-arm robot, controller, dedicated PickMaster software and vision system. The system can operate at more than 150 picking cycles/min, with the snackfood industry's numerous product variants, high throughput and tough product handling challenges making it a particularly successful FlexPicker market.

J&J Snack Foods of Pennsauken, New Jersey, which reportedly runs the world's largest soft pretzel factory, producing 2.1M pretzels a day, has installed five IRB340 robots to package its frozen, soft pretzels, increasing efficiency, reducing labour costs and on-the-job injuries and improving hygiene.

The "value added" complete line includes a resealable bagging unit integrated into the system by JLS Automation Systems and Robotics of York, Pennsylvania. "We previously had a very labour-intensive operation and were doing everything manually," says Phillip Heffelfinger, J&J's director of engineering.

"Before the robots' installation, workers had manually sorted and picked the pretzels, inserted salt packets and coupons and packaged the product. Now the number of people needed per shift has been almost halved."

The soft pretzels leave the freezer on a continuous conveyor, where brushes ensure they travel in a single layer. A second, faster belt ensures an even spread, after which they are rolled beneath a high speed camera. The image is sent to a computer where the PickMaster software scans for pretzel quality and position on the belt and, in "fractions of a second", gives the robots detailed instructions about handling each pretzel.

The robot's gripper fingers pick and sort the randomly located pretzels as they come down the belt. The IRB 340 can pick up and toss out defective pretzels or place them in a consistent orientation on the parallel, lugged conveyor. Together, J&J's two vision cells and five robots can pick and place 250 pretzels/min.

Palletising robots are also a key ABB product area. Interpack saw the company introduce the IRB660, a dedicated palletising robot combining an extremely rapid cycle time with a 3.15m reach and 250kg payload, making it ideal for palletising bags, boxes, crates, bottles "and more". The IRB 660 can service up to four infeed conveyors, two pallet stacks, one slip-sheet stack and four palletising outfeed lines.

Cermex UK, UK subsidiary of French end-of-line packaging machinery specialist Cermex, is one of growing number of companies supplying both "conventional" and robotic packaging equipment.

Md Dick South admits that, with a high speed robotic case packer likely to cost "at least £200,000", robotic equipment is still seen as "too expensive" by some. However, countering this is the robots' "much greater flexibility" over conventional machines and ability to handle a wider range of product.

South says: "Robotic case packers and palletisers may not always be faster or better for all applications but what a robotic casepacker offers over its traditional counterpart is the ability to pick and efficiently pack, in numerous different configurations, many different-shaped and sized containers."

While a conventional pick and place unit might struggle, for instance, to pick up the "lozenge-shaped" fabric conditioner bottle with ball-type closure currently used by Unilever, he says a robotic machine will "comfortably handle these", and can also be used to pick up plastic bottles lying down on a conveyor and place them upright in the carton. At Port Sunlight Unilever is using a Cermex AN-type four-axis toploading casepacker to handle the triangular fabric conditioner bottles.

Multi-function pick and pack

At Interpack Cermex premiered a six-axis robotic multi-function pick and pack robot loader and vision system, part of its new case packing range. Products arrive on an infeed conveyor and are controlled by a vision system from French company Edixia, after which they are gripped in twos by the robot. The items can either be laid flat in cases or trays or stood upright, catering for brand owner and retailers' ever-changing packing preferences, and especially for the growing popularity of "shelf-ready".

South adds: "We developed this system to handle at high speed today's many difficult-shaped products, often made of hard-to-handle soft materials – anything from petfood bags to shampoo bottles."

Another company with extensive robotic pick and packing application experience is systems integrator TEC Manufacturing in Melton Mowbray, UK distributor for the Mitsubishi robot range. Md Tony Jones agrees that, until recently, the "robot population" has been low in Europe outside volume automotive assembly and "a few other key sectors", "largely because for the cost of a robot you could build a bespoke mechanical handling system".

He says: "There was a lack of confidence. Potential users would not commit because not enough people had done so before them. And manufacturing lines did not previously need robots' flexibility. However, with short-run production they are now often the best, if not the only, solution."

Mitsubishi has just launched three new six-axis articulate arm robots. The largest can handle 12kg payloads to a radius of 1.4m at "class-leading speeds" while maintaining a repeatability of 0.05mm. TEC says the flexibility of the "small but sophisticated" six-axis units, which can switch from one task to another "in seconds", will mean high demand.

Jon Sumner, business development manager, Robots & Motion at Mitsubishi Electric Automation Systems Division, adds: "Traditionally pick and place tasks have been undertaken on SCARA (Selectively Compliant Articulated Robot Arm) four-axis robots but six-axis machines offer increased flexibility by effectively replicating the capabilities of a human arm.

"They can undertake more intricate tasks and accommodate a degree of tolerance when picking and placing. We now sell about 10 times the volume of six-axis machines compared with four-axis systems."

Not all companies, however, require six or four-axis robots. United Biscuits has improved production efficiency and reduced labour costs at its Aintree end-of-line packaging line for Jacob's Cheddars cheese biscuits by installing a two-axis, top-loading robot from Sewtec Automation. Since the robot's commissioning, product throughput has risen by 12-15%, while its installation has eliminated a repetitive, labour-intensive task and the risk of RSI-type complaints. Payback is expected within two years.

The robot transfers the packs into cases of 28 (four layers of seven) from a two-lane infeed conveyor at 180 packs/min, a task previously undertaken manually. The vacuum head picks up 14 at a time and then configures the load into two rows of seven. The infeed incorporates a servo-controlled overhead transfer and laser system for detecting packs with faulty end wraps.

The line can also be readily adapted for packing Cheddars in a new cash and carry format, with switching from standard to "cash & carry" mode operation simply requiring adjustment of control, case erector and vacuum head.

Cermex's South says fast changeover between pack sizes and shapes is now "critical" for high speed robotic casepacking type equipment.

One company reportedly well able to satisfy the increasing requirement for high-speed robotic packaging lines that will handle many different goods is Germany's PAAL Verpackungsmaschinen.

David Wilson, whose Tunbridge Wells-based firm CC Automation specialises in automated packaging machinery, is the company's exclusive UK agent. "One exciting recent UK project has seen PAAL design and supply a fully automated Elematic 6000 EFC high speed pick and place toploading case packing system to a leading personal care product manufacturer," he says.

In September this company will install an innovative system, believed to be among the first of its kind, for top loading different-shaped and sized plastic bottles of products like shampoo and conditioner in 2x2 and 2x3 collations into American RSC cases. As the boxes are fed from the case erector they will go into a continuous motion transfer chain and the robot head will then continuously place the bottles into the cases.

Wilson says: "Thanks to sophisticated engineering and line tracking, which ensures synchronisation between carton erector and pick and place unit, the line will fill up to 45 cases/min and could potentially operate at up to 60/min – an extremely fast throughput. The filled cases will then be fed straight to a PAAL Elematic 8000RP robotic palletiser able to handle entire layers."

The personal care company will use PAAL-supplied robotic toploading casepacking Elematic 6000 F-6 line to pack tubes of hair gel and similar products into cardboard boxes and plastic trays. "The company specified the robotic equipment in response to growing retailer demand for shelf-ready packs," says Wilson.

Robots' use is, of course, not confined to handling FMCG products. When Marley Building Materials (MBM) wanted to reduce packaging and meet growing demand for pallet-free building blocks, it bought a Fanuc robot system for its Thurrock Thermalite plant. Steve Herriott, project manager, MBM, explains: "Traditionally, transporting blocks around a site meant lowering packs from a lorry onto a pallet for fork truck access. Pallets aren't wanted on site, especially now fires are illegal, and putting a return deposit on pallets can be seen as penalising the customer. The solution is to provide voids in the pack for fork truck lifting. This immediately reduces packaging."

Producing the configurations for over 17 different void packs was impossible for Thermalite's dedicated automated packaging systems so Fanuc designed and installed a robotic system.

The existing process equipment, which delivers a "cake" of 28 columns of blocks every 150 seconds, dictates the palletising cycle time. To achieve this two independent cells of three robots were supplied – each working from each end of the cake.

Robot one of each cell, a six-axis 200kg payload Fanuc Robotics R2000/200F, picks up a column of blocks and places it on an accumulating transfer conveyor, where the robot selects either a clamping gripper for small blocks or a vacuum plate for larger ones from the auto tool changer.

Laser positioning system

A transfer conveyor uses a laser positioning system and servo-driven blade to accurately position the blocks for the pack building robot. Pack building is undertaken by a four-axis Fanuc M410iWW 450kg palletising robot and a R2000iB robot for creating the void layer.

Robot two packs aligned blocks from the pack building system and places the first layer directly onto a conveyor, while robot three arranges blocks placed in front of it into void layers which, when completed, are positioned by robot two to make up the finished pack.

A good example of how robots can bring improvements in many different applications. However, Simon Wheatley, sales and marketing director at Bradman Lake, one of the UK's leading integrated end-of-line packaging machinery systems specialists, says most big robot manufacturers still tend to produce generic machines suitable for a broad spectrum of industries, rather than tailoring them to a particular one. "In fact," he says, "I predict we will see more OEMs taking basic robotic modules and building them into an added value line, for instance one incorporating a sophisticated vision system that ensures wastage is minimised and product picked, placed and packed highly accurately. We're increasingly undertaking such projects ourselves."

Wheatley says Bradman Lake has incorporated ABB's FlexPicker robots into end-of-line systems for the last five years and is now among the largest FlexPicker integrators worldwide. Many have been integrated into LJ top-loading robotic case packing systems offering top speeds of 300-800 picks/min.

"Such systems are now well entrenched in the confectionery, bakery and biscuit and frozen food markets," says Wheatley. "While there's undoubtedly been a surge in interest in robots, it's often the customer that approaches us asking whether a robot will best meet their needs rather than specifying one from the outset. Simpler interfaces, which greatly simplify linking a robot to other equipment, have also eliminated many adopters' worries."

Alongside using standard robots from ABB and Fanuc, Bradman Lake also designs and builds sizeable numbers of bespoke robot-based end-of-line systems, for instance incorporating ABB's IRB 140 roof-mounted robot – a six-axis anthropometric system with a higher payload than the Flexpicker. "We are also seeing growing demand for robotic case palletisers," says Wheatley.

"In fact, since the coming together of the Autowrappers and Europack businesses with Bradman Lake last summer we genuinely are one-stop shop for end-of line machinery. I believe the surging interest in robots will only grow as traditional resistance to them wanes and more companies buy into the packaging sector robot revolution."