Industry 4.0 Robotic Palletizers Delivering Uninterrupted 24/7 Operation

Today, many palletizing applications are still carried out by manual labour. Many of these companies are experiencing difficulty finding and retaining labour due to repetitive palletizing tasks which lead to strains, injuries, mistakes and inefficiencies.

However, by introducing robotic palletizing solutions, it ensures you get the flexibility, productivity and reliability you need to meet ever shorter product life-cycles, new packaging designs, multiple pack sizes & product variants and batch manufacturing.

Many logistics and warehouse companies are adopting robotic palletizing solutions, improving their time to market and cost effectiveness. Palletizing has the potential to free up employees for higher value-added tasks whilst dealing with labour shortages. By installing the industry 4.0 robotic palletizer, it not only lowers cost of handling, reducing handling tasks and errors, but also lowers the risk of injury to your employees.

What Type of Robots Can Be Used for Palletizing?

There are numerous models on the market today that can assist with your palletizing solution. Choosing the right one for your specific application is vital. The wrong choice could result in inability to use the product line, resulting in loss of productivity and safety hazards.

Factors which can impact choice:

• payload type
• material
• box cartons, cardboard type
• slips (paper/material density)
• payload size
• payload weight
• throughput
• items per minute
• portability (move palletizer between lines)
• floor space

Applied Integration can develop 3D process simulations prior to implementation of the final system to avoid risk and loss of production.

Here are some common types of robots:

Collaborative Robots:

• Configurability – can easily be configured by you to different stack patterns, saving money
• Small footprint
• Collaborative – good for working in areas where people are present (subject to the speed of the robot)
• Have a payload of up to 25kg and a reach of 1900mm
• Safety - Hazardous manual handling of loads can be eliminated using palletizers and cobots

6-Axis Industrial Robots

• Flexible – good for a wide range of tasks within the workspace
• Have a good reach
• Have a high payload capacity
• High speed / High throughput

Gantry Robots

• These can have an even bigger payload than all other types of robots. They have the ability to palletise almost anything that can be lifted by an overhead crane.

Safety

A risk assessment should be completed during the cell implementation to make sure the environment around the cobot and the cobot itself is safe. A machine should only be put into production once the risks have been identified and reduced to an acceptable level.

For a robotic palletizing cell the following areas need to be taken into account:

• Weight of the payload and the robot
• Speed of the load
• Type of product (size, material, etc.)
• Shape of all the moving parts (presence of sharp edges, etc.)
• Presence of a linear axis, which most of the time cannot be power/force limited

Contact our palletizing specialist, Peter Moore, who will be able to advise and provide you with the best industry knowledge to help streamline your end-of-line packaging with a collaborative robotic palletizer.

Applied Integration is a leading systems integrator, specialising in delivering the latest industry technologies with a focus on Industry 4.0, Digitalisation, Internet of Things (IoT), Analytics, Big data / Cloud Technologies, Safety Critical Systems (SIL1, SIL2, SIL3) and Robotics and Collaborative Robots (Cobots). Founded in 2005, AI has a dynamic, 50+ strong engineering team with many years combined experience.

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