Robotic Can Palletizer

Georgetown Brewing, a brewery based out of Seattle, Washington, was looking for a palletizing solution for their can line, due to increased demand for their brews.

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We designed and built a custom solution that fit within their footprint and met their throughput and quality requirements.

 

The palletizing system for Georgetown Brewing consists of a Fanuc M-410iB/140H Robot with custom End of Arm Tool (EOAT), case infeed, pallet outfeed, shrink wrapper, and the necessary control systems.

 

Cases arrive on the infeed from the upstream process and are conveyed into the pick position for the robot. The robot picks the case using a vacuum head, and a custom-designed cardboard clamp secures the carton. The robot places the case onto the pallet using a single customer specified stacking pattern. The pattern consists of interlocking layers with 10 cases per layer and 10 layers high. Once the pallet has been completed, the robot places a slipsheet onto the top of the stack.

 

After placing the slipsheet, the pallet is conveyed into the shrink wrapper and is wrapped in plastic. Once the wrapping has begun, the robot picks another pallet from the stack and places it into position. Once the pallet has been placed and positioned, the robot continues to palletize incoming cases. After the shrink wrapper has completed its operation, the completed pallet is conveyed onto the outfeed conveyor. An operator then picks the pallet from the outfeed conveyor using a forklift.