Robotic Case Packing Cell

MWES provided this firm with an automated pill pack packing machine that consists of two major stations: the robotic case erecting station and the case packing station. Because safety was a major concern, a FANUC collaborative robot (Cobot) was used at the case erecting station which required no fencing as this type of robot senses the presence of human workers and can operate out in the open unabated.

The freestanding case erecting station is a machine consisting of a flat box magazine and a cobot with an associated robot controller. The cobot can automatically erect cases at a rate of four boxes per minute and feed them into the case packing station. The case packing station receives cases from the case erecting station, as well as the customer’s product from upstream processes. The case packing station contains a case conveyor, a product conveyor, case packing delta robots, power and control enclosures, the packing robots and associated controllers, and the operator interface terminal.

The pill packs arrive in the machine via an infeed elevator conveyor from a Wrapade machine. The packs pass under a vision system and trigger sensor to determine their position and orientation on the infeed conveyor. As the pill packs pass under the robots, the robots track the pill packs and it picks three packs at a time to form a complete layer within the box using a vacuum-based end-of-arm tool (EOAT).

The empty cases are erected by the case erection station and are brought to the outfeed conveyor metering station via a two-sided conveyor belt system where the cases are metered. Cases proceed under the robots where pill packs are deposited by the robots in specified patterns until the box is full. Once full, the cases exit the case packing station via the full case elevation station. The case elevation Station is capable of accumulating several cases for the machine’s operators to handle and for downstream processes.