Robotic Stack Handling & Bagging System
Project summary
MWES provided a manufacturer of thermoformed containers used in the food and medical industries with a robotic stack picking and bagging automation cell.
The Challenge
Handling batches of products for a bagging operation can be difficult when dependent on manual labor. Human workers tend to produce inconsistent results and as such affect overall throughput. For that reason, this firm came to Midwest Engineered Systems looking to robotically automate a bagging operation of thermal form product stacks. The system had to retrieve the stacks in multiples from an inbound conveyor and place the stacks on an outbound conveyor that would convey them to a bagging station.
The Solution
MWES designed and built a stack handling system that would robotically retrieve the product stacks from a infeed conveyor, and then transfer the stacks – six at a time – to a stack bagging station. The entire system can be operated by a single worker with minimal manual intervention. The system is designed with future expandability to accommodate different part and stack widths.
The system is equipped with an HMI touch screen, where the operator can change out the robot’s custom interchangeable EOAT gripper to accommodate the different product types being retrieved from the receiving conveyor. At the receiving conveyor, the product would accumulate at an indexing station in rows of up to six. The FANUC R-2000ic industrial robot’s EOAT gripper picks four stacks, shifts the retrieved stacks vertically and retrieves four more stacks from the indexed conveyor.
The robot would transfer and place up to six stacks at once on a conveyor with partitioned slots. The stacks would convey and be ejected one at a time into an automated bagging system. From there the operator can retrieve the finished bagged product.
Impact to the Customer
The robotic stack-handling system, MWES, provided to our customer greatly improved their bagging throughput by eliminating an operation that would once have required manual labor to perform. The bagging and picking automation is performed in under 30 seconds for each stack
Midwest Engineered Systems has a wide range of experience in building robot material handling work cells. If you’re looking to improve your material handling throughput, we have the knowledge and experience to make the project a success.
Contact us to learn how Midwest Engineered Systems can automate even your most complex and challenging operations today!
Innovation Through Automation
Client Details
A designer and manufacturer of unique thermoformed and injection-molded plastic packaging.