Increasing palletising cycles in a food application.

Piab's Kenos® KVGL gripper

Using Piab's Kenos® KVGL gripper in an end-of-line automation system of a flour bagging plant supplied to a leading French company, MAXPRO achieved great advantages in bag handling.

The plant consists of two product packaging lines with a throughput of 70 flour bags of 1 kg per minute per line. The product is oriented and pre-formed on a gripping plane with a size of 800x600 mm.

An articulated robot equipped with the Kenos® KVGL gripping system then picks the full layers of flour bags from the two lines and places them into two carton boxes placed on pallets. Once complete, the two carton boxes with size 600x800xH1100 mm proceed to the wrapping station. Before Piab's vacuum technology was adopted, a gripper with suction cups for each bag to be picked was used. The process was slow and unreliable, as there were frequent drops of product due to dimensional differences between bags, which were difficult to compensate for.

"All the issues have been solved with the use of the Kenos® KVGL foam gripper, which provides maximum flexibility in the gripping layout and enabled a 20% reduction in cycle times", says Roberto Pierobon, Technical Department Manager at MAXPRO.

"Another added value of the Piab gripper is that it does not deform the product, thanks to the larger gripping surface and the lower needed vacuum level compared to the multi-cups gripper, which often damaged the bag paper", adds Massimo Lolato, Project and Testing Manager at MAXPRO.

Kenos® KVGL gripper, with the addition of four Piab BX52P suction cups, is also able to handle the interlayer, allowing the entire palletising process to be optimally operated.

"We are really satisfied with our choice. It was important for us to test the solution at the Piab plant test facility without installing the machine in-house. In addition, the technical advice provided to us by Vladimiro Marconato of F.lli Bono, Piab's authorised distributor, was crucial", concludes Roberto Pierobon.

Piab's Kenos® KVGL vacuum gripping systems simplify handling processes in a variety of industries. It is a versatile product, based on technical foam, designed for handling a wide variety of objects with different shapes, sizes, and materials. In addition to their full configurability in size, foam thickness, and internal gripping technology, Kenos® KVGL grippers feature a foam mounting system that allows fast replacement in the event of wear and tear, without the need for specialised maintenance staff or the use of tools, thereby increasing plant productivity.

Kenos® KVGL grippers can be equipped with integrated vacuum generation through Piab's COAX® multi-stage ejectors or predisposed for external vacuum generation using an electrical vacuum pump, as in the case of the gripper installed by MAXPRO.

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