Separating, labelling, grouping and packaging paint cups
Initial situation
Plates holding paint cups are inserted by hand into designated guides to provide the KRÖNING system with new products. The cups may stick together after the previous production step.
Task
The system serves to separate the paint cups, to group them according to customer specifications, to provide them with an ink jet print and, finally, to pass them on to a downstream flow-pack machine using a delta robot and conveyor belts. The flow-pack principle means that the cups are inserted horizontally into a tubular plastic bag. In addition, the flow packs are counted before they are put in a carton.
Equipment
The plates with the paint cups are manually supplied to the system [1] and pushed to a handover position [2]. The cups, which stick together as they have been sprayed with a binder, are first separated by shaking and jolting them gently. Then the cups are tilted [3], so that they all slide in the same direction and are pushed out row by row at the necessary distance apart [4]. A feeder [5] transports the rows to a conveyor belt with lugs, which take the individual cups away at right angles [6], timed such as to enable automatic sorting. This is the latest point for the cups to be fully separated. The subsequent step is to combine any number of cups to form groups of 1 to 6 cups [7], 5 being the only exception. Then the groups of cups are transferred to the feeding chain of the flow-packing machine [8] using a delta robot with a suction tool. The final process steps include the removal of the empty plates [9], the ink jet print on the side of the cups [10] and the counting of the packaged units [11] to ensure that the cartons are filled correctly.
Challenges
- The paint must remain in the cup when the cup is sucked up.
- Before the cups are pushed onto the conveyor belt a certain distance must be ensured between rows, so that they do not tilt.
- The individual cups stick together because of the binder sprayed on them; they must be reliably released for the process to run smoothly.
- Seamless integration of the machine supplied by a third party (flow-packaging machine) into the system.
Advantages of the system
- Cautious handling of sensitive objects
- Efficient sorting and packaging
- Various grouping options