Palletising is an important part of production processes. Regardless of the kind of product involved, single containers from production have to be accumulated in larger quantities for shipping.
In addition to palletising robots, the Dutch company CSi Industries B.V. offers automatic layer palletisers that contribute significantly to time and cost savings. Increasing the performance of the customer's production line is an important aspect of the process. The C4000 and C5000 layer palletisers are examples of high-tech palletising systems suitable for a wide variety of applications.
Flexible palletising system
The system consists of two interconnected palletisers. Customers using such systems include Philip Morris in Cracow (Poland) and the Heineken brewing company. At Heineken, the system automatically stacks cartons from 24 production lines (with different products) onto pallets using different stacking patterns. Although the system normally operates as a tandem unit, a single machine (half the system) can cope with the full production load by running at peak capacity. Such would be the case if one machine were to fail. The system capacity can be set in the range from 60 to 130 cartons per minute.
Each palletiser has a touchscreen panel for convenient operation. All relevant data can be easily entered and read off at the monitor. The Device Editor enables the configuration of parameters for each product (package or carton) in terms of speed, acceleration, dimensions, position and stacking patterns. This data is stored in the library. The data is linked to a barcode so the palletiser can detect product types automatically. Default values linked to a specific number of starts, stops and operating hours serve as a reference for maintenance scheduling purposes.
Various control strategies
The palletisers have been designed using a decentralised drive strategy. All SEW drives are controlled via a fieldbus linked to an industrial PC. Like the Movidrive frequency inverters, this IPC comes equipped with the IPOSplus integrated positioning and sequence control and is built into the control panel.
Even though the panel design is standardised, it is possible to select different versions (for instance for servo drives). When intelligent drives are connected via a bus system there is no need to make any changes within the control cabinet when the system is expanded or modified. Using this system architecture it now takes only 20% of the time previously required to install the cabling for the machine.
Mark van de Klundert, engineering manager at CSi, explains: "The mixture of centralised, control cabinet-based technology and decentralised drive technology offers advantages because we can standardise and modularise the controllers to a great extent. This means we can set up the systems with greater flexibility and complete the installation and startup phases more rapidly. In addition, our diagnostic options are better. There are also advantages for our customers. Due to the flexibility, new modules can easily be added as the systems are made up almost entirely of plug-and-play components."
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