Product category:
General packaging materials, equipment and services
News Release from: RTS Flexible Systems | Subject: RTS robotics
Edited by the Manufacturingtalk Editorial
Team on 03 October 2006
The ultimate challenge for robotic pick
and place
COULD a robot pick up a poppadum without breaking it? What's more could it pick up four in succession and put them down together?
COULD a robot pick up a poppadum without breaking it? What's more could it pick up four in succession and put them down together? Could it do this at 100 picks per minute, 24 hours per day, seven days per week with a very low breakage rate? It might seem impossible, but RTS Flexible Systems have proved it can be done - and that the installed system can deliver a healthy Return on Investment in less than two years, by significantly reducing labour costs over three shifts and increasing production capacity RTS, the innovative UK provider of vision-guided robotic pick and place systems to the food industry, developed the system in response to a challenge to replace a heavily labour-intensive process
This article was originally published on Manufacturingtalk on 18 May 2005 at 8.00am (UK)
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Individual poppadums were manually picked, having been delivered from a frying machine by conveyor, then stacked into piles of four.
The piles then needed to be manually picked again and placed into a vacuum forming machine.
Using a combination of RTS PixcellTM vision systems and ABB Flexpicker robots, the RTS system is able to collect four poppadums one by one from the conveyor and place them for packaging in the vacuum forming machine.
It is also capable of handling multiple product variants for variety packs.
The key to the solution is the end-effector technology, which enables the poppadums to be handled extremely gently.
Also key was the ability of RTS' own vision software to determine which poppadums can be picked successfully from the conveyor by instructing the robot to avoid any that are on top of, or overlapped with another.
Said David Bradford, Managing Director of RTS Flexible Systems: "If we can develop a workable and commercially viable solution for such a challenging product, then there must be very few products for which automation could not potentially deliver significant production benefits.
"The RTS team developed the application using an iterative approach to come up with a reliable solution that not only worked in RTS' workshops but also on site in a real production situation. Request a free brochure from RTS Flexible Systems ...
We are confident the approach could be adopted for any similar products where the need for extremely gentle manual handling leads to high labour costs.".
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