Proco Machinery Inc., Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, a manufacturer of automation systems for the blow molding industry, has unveiled the next generation of its Pakman case packer, which is integrated with Yaskawa Motomon HC10 and HC20 collaborative robots for greater efficiency and automation for blow molded bottle manufacturing lines. These systems efficiently handle blow molded containers and deliver a major cost reduction vs. conventional automation.
Proco’s case packer has seen several generational changes that have delivered greater efficiencies with the focus of bringing innovative technology to bottle packaging. The latest iteration is a breakthrough collaborative robotic automation system that works interactively with co-workers and needs minimal training for teaching new tasks.
Siva Krish, vice president of sales, said these systems are designed to complement the production line and provide simplified operation, a smaller footprint and enhanced efficiencies. These collaborative robotic systems reduce the handling of the container and provide an excellent ROI.
Tooling considerations are important in the development of cobot systems for the blow molding of plastic containers. Proco’s Pakman case packer features a collating indexing accumulation system to accumulate complete layers of bottles inside the packaging cell. The accumulation table stages the layer of bottles so they can be picked up by Proco’s EOAT and placed inside the box.
Traditional robotic movement by row would slow the cycle time of the packaging system. The accumulation indexing conveyor helps to increase the line speed of the Pakman packaging cell since there will be one movement of the robot per layer. PET containers – due to high static of the heated bottles – tend to repel each other when they are close together. The layer pack EOAT technology ensures that containers are placed inside the box as a complete layer, preventing any change of bottle position.
Another innovative feature is Proco’s Integrated Rotary Inverting Technology, which helps to rotate a layer of bottles to neck-down orientation. Proco’s Pakman packaging cell has the new advanced innovative feature that will help the processor pack bottles in all neck-down orientation in a layer formation. This feature does not change the packaging cell size. It is an add-on feature that can be purchased at a later date and fitted to the line.
The Proco Pakman case packer is a totally integrated packaging module and is supplied with a six-axis collaborative robotic arm, infeed conveyor and a box conveyor, all mounted onto a common sub-frame, which, in turn, is fitted with leveling pads and castor wheels. It can be moved quickly into position, set up and put into production. These systems are highly compact and can fit between the blow molding lines. Proco’s compact case packer has a cell size of just 100 x 70″ and consists of the following features:
- Mobile cell with safety door and interlocking
- Integrated with Yaskawa HC10 or HC20 cobots
- Integrated collating table for staging the bottles
- Integrated container inverting mechanism
- In-build secondary PLC with HMI for easy operator interface
- In-build vacuum feature for polybag
- Box alignment mechanism
- Bottle infeed and exit conveyor
- Box infeed and exit box conveyor
For more information, visit www.procomachinery.com.
