CROSSRUNNER PALLETIZING SYSTEM

16/12/2013

CrossRuner the centralized palletizing system to optmize space and operations.

Important global german company in the pharmaceutical industry hires AUGI to design and integrate a totally automated conveying, palletizing and stretch-wrapping system for medium - high capacities, to be installed in the plant located in the Barcelona area. 

The main challenge of this project was to deliver a system that operated without supervision, capable of stacking at high speed (> 2.000 cph / line) very small and light products (< 100x100x100 mm. and > 150 < 350 gr), while maintaining flexible spacings between boxes in the layer pattern (digitally adjustable), a maximum stacking tolerance of 3 mm in the outer pallet walls, and pallet heights up to 2 m. 

The project included the product elevation at the casepacker exit, aerial conveyors up to the centralized palletizing area in the warehouse, palletizing on height (at 4,5 m), and stertch wrapping at the end. For such purpose 2 HighRunner MK7 palletizers, assisted by 2 ProRunner MK9 pallet elevators, and a Saturn S2 inline ring stretch wrapper were implemented.  

The palletizng installation is in CrossRunner layout configuration, where palletizers installed in parallel operate on height, while below a central pallet conveyor system placed in perpendicular links the empty pallet destacker with the loaded pallets stretch-wrapper. The pallet elevators enable a verticla flow of pallets between palletizers and conveyors.      

The CrossRunner pallet conveyors are synchronized with all the machines in the line in order to perform the functions of: empty pallet feed in, dynamic storage of pallets (empty and loaded), and evacuate the loaded pallets towards the stertch wrapper and the accumulation area.

Additionally, communications between the casepackers and the palletizers were established, so format changes confirmed in the casepackers are also automatically transferred to the rest of the installation with zero waiting time   

The entire installation is managed by Allen Bradley equippment with Ethernet IP and Devicenet field busses.