Robots offer speed and flexibility in packaging applications

December 03, 2003-- When products need to be packaged and then case packed, a manufacturer needs either a large pool of workers willing to put in shift after shift of boring, repetitive labor or some type of automation.

And, in many parts of the country, too many manufacturers are competing for too few workers, many of whom are looking for more of a challenge than a packaging job can provide.

"Keeping people on packaging lines is difficult because it's mind- numbing work," said Carl Traynor, senior director of marketing at Motoman Inc.

SCARA robots are a good choice for packaging applications where the product is picked up and packaged on a flat plane. Here, Adept Technology SCARA robots package chocolate snacks using a vacuum gripper that allows the robots to pick up multiple products.

Automation often is the solution to high turnover of packaging employees, which adds to the cost of doing business, or an increase in repetitive stress injuries. "If your workers' comp claims are up or if more employees are reporting pain and injuries, that's a good time to automate," said John Clark, director of sales for Epson Robotics.

Automation can mean dedicated packaging equipment, which is designed and built for one job. While that makes sense for some applications, more and more products are being packaged in a variety of ways to better market the product to consumers. That's where the flexibility of robotics comes in.

"The opportunities we're seeing for packaging are where there is a lot of product variability and a quick change of tooling is needed to accommodate a variety of products," Traynor said. "Snack foods are a great example, where companies are using a variety of different packages and different combinations of foods in those packages. Those are great applications for robotics because robots can accommodate a lot of variety, even within the same package."

Steve Annen, director of marketing at Adept Technology, uses Oreo cookies to illustrate the latest trend in marketing through packaging. "A few years back, the cookie companies and others were looking to capture more business from consumers by offering unique packaging. Oreo, for example, rather than just having its large bag, wanted to offer packages of four or six cookies. This kind of flexibility in packaging is important from a marketing standpoint, but you can't easily adapt hard automation to all those different types of packages. Robots, however, are easy to switch over, through digital I/O or a selector switch, and the robot can go to different program and different packaging."

And it's not just the cookie and snack food companies that are being more creative with packaging, which means they're also being mor creative with their automation.

"The same trend is also going on in electronics, automotive, electronic components," said Charlie Duncheon, executive vice president at Adept. "We've seen the trend in most markets."

Another example Annen provided to illustrate robotics flexibility in packaging comes from the battery industry. "In the short term, robots have the flexibility to do different varieties of packaging. The long-term flexibility is to retool the automation and redeploy it to do something completely different. The battery companies found that just packaging batteries wasn't enough to get people to buy them. The found that if they added a flashlight to the package of batteries, they sold more batteries. Robots can handle that type of flexibility, and that kind of flexibility is important in the long run."

In fact, any market that packages fast-moving goods no longer has to rely on dedicated packaging machinery. Improved technology and faster robots have allowed the robotics industry to make in-roads in packaging applications even when speed is one of the main drivers for automation.

"We're involved in almost everything in fast-moving goods industries, especially the food industry, pharmaceutical markets, health-care and personal-care products, paper and office supplies," said Frank-Peter Kirgis of SIG Pack Systems, which designs and builds packaging machinery that often features SIG's delta robot with integrated vision. "We do complete turnkey packaging systems, which handle primary packaging, then further along, the secondary packing of packages into cartons, then onto a pallet. Our delta robot is used in the systems as a handling device."

In the past, if raw speed was needed in packaging applications, dedicated machinery was the solution because robots couldn't always hit the desired cycle times. But over the past few years, the speed of robots has increased to the point that, in many cases, cycle times are not longer an issue.

"There was time when people said they needed hard automation because robots couldn't achieve the same kind of cycle times," Annen said. "But with the improved speeds of robots, that has changed. You often can deploy a robotic system and achieve the cycle times of hard automation."

And, in applications where speed is important but flexibility is even more important, robots have a definite edge over dedicated packaging machines, particularly six-axis robotic arms.

"In our case, SCARAs are an extension of our six-axis line," Traynor said. "We lead with our six-axis robots and fill in with SCARAs. You can buy now a six-axis robot for about the equivalent price of SCARA, which still have higher speed, so now it's a speed versus flexibility decision. Speed is good in some applications, but in may applications, people are realizing they can make their rates with six-axis robots and have greater flexibility."

While still not as fast as SCARAs, six-axis robotic arms, like this Motoman UP20, are still fast and have the added benefit of additional axes, which allow them to package at an angle, for example.

The flexibility of robots also has been enhanced with improved and lower-cost machine-vision systems.

"Vision's one of the bigger advances," Clark said. "You can always find a robust robot, but the vision side is the big thing. With vision, the robot can see what it's picking up, and now do it faster, and also see where the part or product is going to be placed. And the robot can also inspect it. Vision cycle time has improved a lot and is able to keep up with the robot and cycle times."

"With faster robots, you also need a vision system that's faster," Duncheon said, who pointed out that Adept introduced vision- guided conveyor tracking in 1985. "If it's not, the speed is lost. I'd say that vision has been a bigger enabler in robotic packaging than just faster robots."

Vision also helps robotic automation reduced scrap rates, something robots already are good at.

"It's very important to have vision in bakery applications, where you have cookies or crackers coming out of an oven," Annen said. "If you have to stop and fixture the products, it slows the process and may damage the product."

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