Food & Drink Process & Packaging Issue 28 2020 | Page 23

“On all of our lines we were relying on manual labour to pack bags of sprouts into crates. However, with Brexit, we foresee a potential labour issue. The time was right to invest in a machine that could perform this task,” explains Ian. One of the challenges of automating this operation was the number of possible pack and crate configurations. Sprouts are packed in a variety of bag sizes, from 200g up to 500g, and each retailer has their own crate format requirements. “We needed the flexibility to accommodate different pack sizes and crate lengths, whole and half crates, landscape and portrait layouts and different volumes - from 10 packs up to 25 packs to a crate,” says Ian. From Drysdales’ point of view, this Drysdales invited several robotic Brillopak’s ability to deliver a sound expertise instilled confidence in technical solution backed up by honest, equipment suppliers to put forward specialist advice if its needs were to proposals, among them Brillopak, a change in the future. Kent-based designer and manufacturer of flexible robotic packing and palletising systems. “Brillopak has many years of experience Brillopak’s solution was the UniPAKer as controlling the suction on the bags was in vacuum heads, which was important, a key part of this project. This also gave robotic pick and place cell that was us confidence that if in future, a customer originally engineered for packing bags of potatoes and apples into crates. The UniPAKer has been specifically designed to improve productivity and improve Suction heads can accommodate the wants to produce, say, a 1kg pack, we can easily change the head,” says Ian. irregular contours of flow wraps and pillow packs and adjust swiftly to The UniPAKer cell has been running different pack sizes. However, if the successfully for over eight months at vacuum is compromised, there is the Drysdales’ facility in Cockburnspath, risk of bags sagging and dropping Berwickshire. The flexible system onto the packing conveyor, causing is unphased by the multiple crate to 1kg. line stoppages. Brillopak’s approach to configurations required on this line, and is vacuum handling is different to others currently programmed to run 30 different “We had never tried using the UniPAKer in that it manufactures its own heads patterns without the need for any tool using cups with independent vacuum changeovers. Manual intervention is that we could do the job. The challenges generators, providing greater control limited to just one person to take away were the same as with potatoes – how during handling. full crates, replace empty crates and pack presentation on shelf. Using a four- arm delta robot on a compact footprint, it will load up to 75 VFFS, tray sealed or flow wrapped packs per minute and is ideal for vegetables, fruits and salad up to handle sprouts before, but we knew perform quality checks. do you pick and place flexible bags containing small, moving spherical “When you are looking to replace products at speed with accuracy?” says labour at the end of a line with robotics, “We’ve achieved what we set out to at David Jahn, director at Brillopak. consistency is king, as you have the start of the project and the system to assume there won’t be anyone does exactly what Brillopak promised Two key elements of the UniPAKer there to intervene if the robot stops. it would do. Throughout the project solution address these challenges: the Our business is built on designing they have been completely honest and use of vision technology to recognise automation solutions that operate at really good and quick at coming up with and orientate the packs and the unique high speed but with consistency; the key solutions,” concludes Ian. design of Brillopak’s suction end- to achieving this is precision control over effector. the product throughout,” says David. www.brillopak.co.uk FDPP - www.fdpp.co.uk 23