Robot Packing Equipment: Case Packaging

Motoman's: Case Packing Power Point Presentation

Case Study KR 180 PA : How Nestle Benefited from our Case Packaging Equipment

Palletizing of the boxes of Nespresso capsules in the Classic and Professional variants, which each contain 200 and 300 capsules respectively, is now carried out by three KUKA KR 180 PA palletizing robots. The boxes are brought on conveyors from the production area to the robotic cells. There they are held pneumatically in pickup positions high up off the floor. Previous to this, a scanner reads the barcodes of the boxes, a mixture of which is present on the conveyor, thus enabling the controller to send each type unmixed to the “correct” robot. The KR 180 PAs pick up four boxes at a time and stack them on europallets in accordance with the specified stacking patterns. The europallets rest on floor-level roller conveyors. By offsetting the stacking patterns from one layer to the next, extraordinary stability is achieved.

The stacking patterns differ between the Classic and Professional variants. Classic capsules are stacked by the robots in five layers per pallet, with 16 boxes per layer: two rows of six boxes crosswise and one row of four boxes lengthwise. First the KR 180 PAs set down two rows of four boxes simultaneously. They then pick four of them up again, putting them back on the pallet two at a time in two steps. They then pick up four more boxes, which they palletize individually. The larger boxes filled with Professional capsules are set down by the robots twelve to a layer, and six layers on a pallet. They begin with two groups of two boxes, followed by two groups of four. The KR 180 PAs create the desired stacking patterns by rotating their suction grippers. Since the vacuum circuits in their end-effectors can be controlled individually, the robots can hold or set down any desired number of the four boxes which they pick up. To handle the empty pallets needed for palletizing, the KR 180 PAs fold out two hooks on each of the narrow ends of their grippers.

The KR 180 PA was chosen above all due to its long reach. Even though the roller conveyor leading into the cell is installed about three meters above floor level, the palletizing experts are able to take packages from it and to set them down near the floor. It was thus possible to avoid additional investment costs for the roller conveyor – thanks to the KR 180 PAs’ long reach, the conveyor did not have to be routed downwards.