Is Flexability Important To You?
Does your warehouse, factory or order fulfillment/distribution centre use conventional palletisers for your product packaging? If so, you might be considering switching to a robot palletiser. It’s flexible and offers significant space and maintenance savings — which could help streamline your operations and make it more profitable. Its suitability for your business will depend on many factors, including your desired production rates and how many products you handle. To make an informed choice, here’s the difference between the two and why robot palletisers are now superseding conventional palletisers.
Conventional Vs Robot Palletisers: How Do They Work?
In short, conventional palletisers build layers, while robots are designed to pick up individual products one by one. Conventional palletisers transport the products using conveyors, It rotates, aligns, pushes and lifts them into rows until a product layer is formed.
The product layer is discharged onto a pallet and compressed if necessary. The process repeats until the pallet is full and is ready for shipping. Often, conventional palletisers include extras like a stretch wrapper or a stretch hooder.
Robot palletisers are also fed products via a conveyor, but they use a robotic bag hand or component to pick up and move products into one or more pallets simultaneously.
Robot Palletiser Speed & Space Savings
Conventional palletisers are faster, offering speeds of anywhere between 10 to 40 bags and 10 to 200 cases, cartons or bags a minute, depending on the complexity of its design, the model in question and the product being packed. It’s worth noting that it operates faster when building a single pallet at a time and can take up a lot of space in terms of height and width, as the products must be queued on a conveyor.
Robot palletisers are usually slower, but also offer a range of speeds depending on their model and its capabilities. However, they require less space. As it picks up and places products it won’t require lengthy conveyors and can be installed in tight spaces without contravening safety standards.
What Makes Robot Palletisers Flexible?
Robot palletisers offer increased flexibility as their end-of-arm-tools can be customised with vacuum plates to magnetic grippers so they are capable of handling all types of products.
They can also palletise more than one product at a time (if it’s a case of products) and can handle multiple stock-keeping units according to any pallet configuration — ensuring each pallet is compressed and squared for increased stability.
Most robotic palletisers can also de-palletise products from many different containers. Although some conventional palletisers can do the above, most will require costly upgrades to do so.
Robot Palletiser Cost Savings
Robot palletisers often have a higher price tag but offer cost savings in other ways. As they become more popular on the market, they’re likely to become affordable while their performance improves. You can expect a robot palletiser to require maintenance less often compared to a conventional unit, as it has fewer electrical components. As it requires less downtime, has fewer breakdowns, and can fill multiple pallets at once — it can save you time. Conventional machines are usually more complex and will require specialised repair and maintenance — usually from the business that sold it to you.
Ready To Invest In One?
Ready to purchase a robot palletiser to replace or supplement your current setup? If the above advantages appeal to you, then contact Webster Griffin.
As specialists in palletising technology for bags, sacks, cartons and cases, we can match you with an automated system that meets your needs in terms of payload and throughput, so contact us today.
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About Robot Palletisers