Hygienic Robotic Food Loading

Challenge

Our customer approached us with the challenge of automatically loading a hygienic robotic food handling and high-speed thermoform packaging machine with single-serve cheese sticks. The upstream converting process could produce 720 portions per minute, but the thermoforming material could not be hand-load at this rate.

The customer was also dealing with the cost justification of the advanced automation required to eliminate eight people on the line. The most critical demand was for the entire line to be eligible for USDA dairy acceptance.

Ready-to-eat snacks are inherently high-risk, and the customer’s quality team wanted Marchant Schmidt to focus on options to mitigate the danger.

Project Solution

Marchant Schmidt approached the application in a unique way to achieve the results requested by our customer. First, we acknowledged that picking this high volume of sticks in random orientation would be futile. So, we changed the upstream cutting process to produce sets of 24 sticks that discharge from the intelligent cutter in a tight group.

Using two delta-style robots, we pick half of the sticks in an alternating pattern. The first robot retrieves the left set of 12 sticks, and the second robot picks up the right set of 12 sticks. Omron Adept robots: pick them due to their high payload capacity and clean design.

However, the end-of-arm tooling was specially plan to meet the high standards of USDA-Dairy. All stainless steel construction uses FDA-approved plastics. 4A polish on any product contact areas which includes tooling that will be over the product zone.

The addition of plastic spacers created a tight seal and prevented bacteria harborage between metal-to-metal contact. They kept pneumatics down but added catch pans beneath those that were in use.

Another noteworthy approach to achieving speed and accuracy was the use of pins to positively hold the cheese instead of vacuum picking. Tiny pins engage with the cheese, then close or heal under pressure in the thermoformer.

The end tool was custom designed to pick a tight nest of 12, then spread out to match the thermoformed pitch spacing before ejecting all sticks into their pockets.

Accumulation was added to the cutting process to ensure the robots always had cheese to pick from. This ultimately resulted in 15% increase in packaged products.

Additionally, this hygienic robotic food loading thermoform is very reliable, and our customers enjoy 99% accurate placement. Cheese is a natural product and can have significant dimensional variation.

Moreover, to ensure the product remains within the specifications of the robotic loading system, automatic measurement systems were added to the upstream equipment. This ensures consistent quality and reduces the need for operators to rework products prior to package sealing.

Lastly, for a more in-depth discussion on hygienic robotic food loading equipment, contact Marchant Schmidt today.