40 n FOOD AND BEVERAGE September 2024 www.drivesncontrols.com Robot sausage-slicer is ‘the world’s first’ AGerman grocery wholesaler, Kaufland Fleischwaren, is using a six-axis robot to slice 1.5m–long sausages, each weighing 12kg, to prepare them for packaging. The robotic slicer – thought to be a world first – relieves employees of repetitive and heavy work, while bringing other advantages. Managers at the plant in Heilbronn, were aware of the challenges of using robots to handle food before it is wrapped and packaged. If a robot comes into direct contact with foodstuffs, the strictest hygiene standards are essential. Furthermore, the various disinfection processes and intensive washdown of all parts of the installation, which can take place several times a day, rule out the use of standard robots. But the potential attractions of automating the slicing process were considerable. “Spending an entire shift loading a slicer with sausages measuring 1.5m in length and weighing 12kg was one of the more unpopular tasks for our employees,” recalls Dieter Schäfer, Kaufland’s packaging team leader. “In any case, the introduction of more efficient processes in other areas of production meant that this manual part of the line could no longer keep up. The integration of a robot seemed to be the right solution, but we were sceptical as to whether a six-axis machine would be able to withstand our cleaning cycles over a prolonged period.” Kaufland brought in a machine-builder, bsb robot systems. What had initially sounded like a simple task – picking up four giant sausages and transferring them to the slicer – turned out to be trickier in practice. “The daily cleaning procedures were not the problem,” explains bsb’s managing director, Rainer Bonfig. “We know that Stäubli’s washdown-capable HE (humid environment) robots can easily handle this. The two problem factors were fitting the robot into a tight space and ensuring that the gripping technology was precise enough to handle the extra-long sausages without damaging them.” To avoid damaging the sausages during the process, bsb devised a special 1.8m-wide “quadruple roller gripper”, which weighs almost 80kg. The six-axis robot positions the gripper under four sausages at a transfer point and lifts them gently. The gripper has four rollers driven by a central motor for each of the four sausages. Four evenly-spaced supports prevent the limp 1.5m-long sausages from sagging and splitting. The Stäubli TX200 robot approaches the transfer position precisely before loading begins. Once the final position has been reached, the central motor sets the gripper’s rollers in motion. In this way, the sausages reach the slicer infeed reliably and precisely positioned. To prevent them from sliding around, the surfaces of the 3D-printed rollers have a fine spiky texture that provides the necessary traction. The enclosed, waterproof TX200 robots, designed for extreme cleanroom conditions, have internal media and supply lines and IP67-compliant sealed housings made of corrosion-resistant materials. They use foodgrade NSF H1 oil. Neither intensive cleaning, nor the use of aggressive disinfectants, affects the robots. The Heilbronn plant can now output 12,000kg of sliced sausage every day in two shifts. It can handle 21 different types of sausage, which are combined in four different sausage packaging machines, before being despatched to customers in Germany and Eastern Europe. Kaufland packaging team leader Dieter Schäfer has overcome his initial reservations and is now an enthusiastic advocate for the robot cell, which he says “has completely dispelled my concerns regarding compliance with our strict hygiene standards. “The robotic solution also fulfils our other objectives 100%,” he adds. “The lightened load on our employees, the reliable way in which the machine performs on such a small footprint, the increase in productivity, the high availability, the resistance to intensive washdown cleaning, and the exciting new opportunities it presents, make this project a complete success in all respects.” n Food manufacturers are wary about using robots to handle food before it is packaged. But a German meat processor is using a hygienic cleanroom robot to slice 12 tonnes of sausage a day, thus relieving workers of an unpleasant task and eliminating a previous bottleneck in its plant. Kaufland Fleischwaren’s robotic machine uses a specially developed gripper with four rollers to handle the 1.5mlong, 12kg sausages so that they don’t sag or split
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