An efficient solution with Spider Robots
This production company of adhesive tape rolls faced a significant challenge: manually removing rolls from the production machines, transporting them to a central palletising department and palletising the coils on pallets with intermediate sheets was a heavy and labour-intensive process. To lighten this load and realise significant savings, the company decided to automate the entire process.el production lines.
Challenges in traditional methods of palletising adhesive tape bobbins
Traditional articulated arm robots proved unsuitable for this task because of their limited reach. The need for a solution that could provide a large working range brought attention to the Spider gantry robot.
Innovative solution for spools: Spider gantry robots
Thanks to the larger portal frame of the Spider Palletizer, it was possible to provide a large working area, creating a viable solution to this automation challenge. The rolls of adhesive tape are pushed from the production machine onto carts with horizontal pins. These carts are then docked to the palletiser, after which the rolls are automatically taken over on trays.
Automation of stacking adhesive tape bobbins
The rest of the stacking process is fully automatic. Empty pallets are automatically supplied and positioned at the various stacking positions. The company produces up to four different types of rolls, each to be stacked on individual pallets. Cardboard sheets are picked up by the robot, aligned and automatically placed on the empty pallet and between the layers of spools. The bobbins are picked up by the robot in their core, tilted 90° and stacked horizontally on the pallets. Once the pallets are full, they are automatically removed out of the robot’s reach and a new empty pallet is fed in.
Results and benefits of Spider Robots
This manufacturing company has now installed two Spider gantry robots, which are good for simultaneous automatic palletisation of eight different types of spools on individual pallets. This automation has not only eased labour-intensive work, but also significantly improved the efficiency and accuracy of the stacking process. This allows the company to better focus on other important aspects of their production process, while the robots ensure consistent and reliable stacking.