For a well-known Italian company producing calcium carbonate from one of the purest deposits in Europe, Bierre Automazioni supplied a robotic palletizer for 25kg bags on 1000×1200 (5-bags/layer) or 1100×1100 (4-bags/layer) pallets.
In the plant where Bierre installed this new automatic palletizing unit, the customer processes and packages highly pure calcium carbonate, suitable for food industry, through a production cycle that matches the strictest safety requirements in compliance with reference regulations, and through a detailed schedule of continuous controls.
The bags, which are in paper and without a valve, but with a watertight seal to prevent air leaks and contamination of the filled product, required an in-depth preliminary analysis and initial tests, which were carried out on an existing machine in another factory of the same client, so to study and propose the most adequate type of handling, capable to ensure gentle gripping and positioning operation and, at the same time, precise stacking on the pallets.
Bierre was entrusted with every phase of the project: layout, mechanical and electrical design, automation software, workshop manufacture and assembly, transportation, on-site installation and start-up.
This Bierre palletizer is composed of:
- infeed driven conveyors for bags, complete with weighing unit to control the weight of each bag;
- five-axis anthropomorphic robot;
- palletizing head, mounted on the robotic arm, suitable both to pick-up up and deposit bags through single-bag gripping pincers, and to pick-up and place flat sheets through suction cups, specially designed to ensure precision and smoothness of movements;
- static flat sheets magazine;
- accessible rejecting station for non-compliant out-of-weight bags;
- portal structure for high and fixed level palletization, complete with low-friction opening plane;
- hydraulic lifting system for pallet up-&-down cycle and for layer pressing cycle;
- motorized roller conveyors for empty pallets in-feed and full pallets out-feed;
- automatic de-stacking magazine for empty pallets;
- electrical control cabinet with PLC and HMI panel;
- perimeter fences and safety systems compliant with EC regulations.
The overall system, which fully met the client’s satisfaction, features a configuration that facilitates cleaning and maintenance operations and ensures efficiency, safety and compliance with environmental regulations, delivering a complete and customized solution designed by Bierre with careful consideration of the specific requirements of the working area, as well as the characteristics of the handled packaging.
