News

CKF Systems, the packaging and palletisation machinery specialist, has secured a £1.2m contract to supply an automated robot palletising system for Cadbury's Sheffield factory.

The order includes the conveying of cases from eight existing production lines, with individual flow rates of up to 22 cases per minute, through to three robots cells and a pallet handling system.

Case handling will encompass a series of dedicated lines each comprising of a spiral elevator and high level transfer system to deliver cases to the robot palletising system.

The cases will be delivered on high level independent conveyor systems, declining prior to the robot cells, where the cases will be collated to the appropriate format prior to the gripper pick up .

The robot palletising operation will use three ABB IRB 660 robots fitted with vacuum grippers and operating with the Pick Master 5 software, a dedicated palletising program.

The system is required to handle three separate pallet sizes, Chep UK, Euro and the Chep USA pallet.

The pallet distribution system will comprise of three detachers, one for each pallet size, which feed single pallets onto a common shuttle car that delivers them to the appropriate robot station on demand.

Each robot station will include multiple pallet conveyor arrangements, each incorporating a hold station for empty pallets; pallet load station with positive datum location and a buffer position for loaded pallets prior to a second shuttle car for full pallets.

Loaded pallets will be received from each of the three stations on a dedicated shuttle carriage and delivered to a high speed Stretchwrapper unit.