Flexible Picking and Packing
A Flexible Picker linked to a PLC, Vision, RFID Tag or Barcode System can pick, pack, palletise, count and track no matter what comes down the line. The market for big production runs is diminishing. Greater brand choice means smaller lots requiring more flexibility. The current state of the industry is lower volumes and higher product mixes. The ability to change over rapidly in product lots is important, but if the process itself is inefficient, it will not be cost-efficient.
With advanced planning flexibility can be built into your system to enable the changes required in your back end picking, packing and palletising to be automated according to what processes are happening up the line.
Whether you're automating a single process or an entire operation, by planning in advance changes anywhere in the line can enable other parts of the line to adjust accordingly without the need for reprogramming. The challenge is to ensure that the picking and packaging processes can meet the speed which the manufacturing lines can deliver. This is achieved by a new breed of high speed robots which we will discuss later in the article.
The Picking and Placing process can be automated in several ways - the most common is via a PLC with a HMI (Human Machine Interface) touch screen and a human operator who instructs the robot what to pick and where to place. This requires someone to always be in attendance and be constantly monitoring the line.
However, by integrating a Vision system directly to the robot via a PC, the system can be 'taught' to identify item no.1, find, pick, and cartonise onto belt no 1; identify item no 2 and find, pick and cartonise onto belt no 2, and so on.
Then by using a system of accumulation, an automated packager such as the HMPS Packager, can tell the cartoniser or packager Robot when it is full and hold the system while a new carton is loaded. Other technologies such as RFID Tags or Barcode Systems also can be integrated to add additional automation such as product tracking and inventory management.
The type of robot that is capturing attention for these fast pick-and-place applications as well as assembly, material removal, collaborative welding, part loading and flexible fixturing is generically known as a Flexible Picker. Technically described as a parallel kinematic robot and based on technology used in flight simulators. This type of robot features multiple jointed arms connected at the top and bottom, so it looks a bit like an octopus with all its legs clenched at a single point.
One example of this new breed of industrial robots is the FlexPicker developed by ABB Robotics. It is an ultra-fast, flexible pick-and-place robot with a payback time of only one year. It is capable of identifying, picking and placing more than 120 objects per minute moving along a conveyor. It is based on the single pick-and-place principle and will more than halve the picking costs compared with earlier solutions.
Chocolates, cakes and other foods, electronic and mechanical components, and pharmaceuticals are just a few examples of products where the FlexPicker robot is expected to be of interest. The products being picked can also be wrapped or unwrapped, as an automated 'clean' environment can be set up as part of the packing process.
Another application area that is being developed is the packaging of ready-to-eat foods and portion-packed meals for airlines and the like. There is also interest in the picking of electronic parts for cellular phones, PCs and similar products, as well as in packaging in the light engineering and pharmaceutical sectors.
A Flexible Picker solution integrated with a Vision system and an automated packager/s therefore offers a unique combination of price, performance and flexibility. This is because of a fast design solution that allows products to be packaged one by one. This solution gives the customer flexible production and profitability for applications where previously it was too expensive to automate the production.
Machinery Automation & Robotics
1/101 Derby Street
Silverwater NSW 2128
Phone: (61) 2 9748 7001
http://www.machineryautomation.com.au