30 n ROBOTICS AND AUTOMATION July/August 2024 www.drivesncontrols.com Palletising robot eases sauce-maker’s bottlenecks The Swiss condiment manufacturer Brunos produces salad dressings and gourmet butters. Founded in 2001, its sales have risen steadily, prompting the family business to employ increasingly sophisticated production methods to keep up with demand. The company’s 45 employees currently produce around four million products each year at its 3,500m2 production facility in Sarnen in central Switzerland. Although its production line was already highly automated, until recently, Brunos was still packaging and palletising its products by hand, resulting in bottlenecks as employees struggled to match the speed of the automated line. Unable to handle increased orders and at the limit of its capabilities, the rm began to look for an alternative – but its complex palletising patterns and limited space made the search challenging. “We had reached our limits,”explains managing director, Michael Arnold. “We had two or three employees packing bottles manually into cardboard boxes, but they could hardly keep up with the speed of our production line. We began thinking about an automated solution for the palletising process, but our space was rather tight. We needed to nd a solution with a compact footprint that would tie in with our existing automated processes in terms of quality and productivity.” Brunos turned to Robotec Solutions, a local supplier of robot-assisted automation, which has completed more than 800 successful installations in a wide variety of sectors. “Working together with our customers, our most important task is to nd the best automation solution for the application,”says Jörg Lanz, Robotec’s head of sales. “In this project to palletise the bottled salad dressings, our main challenges were cycle times, space constraints and palletising patterns.” Brunos’ production line lls bottles individually before placing them in groups of six, ten and 12. These are then shrinkwrapped in foil. “We needed to devise an innovative palletising pattern based on the pre-grouping of bottle packs and involving part-rotation,” Lanz explains. “After completing each layer, we required the robot to place an additional intermediate layer on top. This operation would have to take place without changing the gripper to help minimise cycle times.” Robotec opted for a Fanuc M-710iC/50 sixaxis industrial robot with 50kg payload capacity and a reach of 2,050mm. As well as handling heavy loads, this machine’s long reach “allows optimal processing of the palletising pattern – and always at full speed,” Lanz says. Further attractions include its low energy consumption, small footprint and good availability of spare parts.” For Brunos, automating its palletising operations has allowed it to keep pace with its production lines, enabling it to full its growing order book. n Video of the application in action: www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9KOhG0ZYuM A Swiss condiment manufacturer has brought in a six-axis industrial robot to automate the palletising of its line of bottled salad dressings. The installation has eliminated a previous production bottleneck, allowing the company to keep pace with its growing order book. Automating its palletising operation has allowed Brunos to keep pace with its production line. The long-reach robot of allows optimal processing of the palletising pattern at full speed.
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