Robotic product orientation and feeding from Theegarten
For Managing Director Egbert Röhm, the answer was robotics. At interpack, the company demonstrated a robotic orientation system utilizing an ELAU P3 robot arm. ELAU allowed Theegarten-Pactec to embed their own robotic solution as part of their machine instead of an add-on third party robot with a separate, proprietary 'black box' controller.
Because there is only one ELAU automation controller to handle the machine and the robot, it's a much faster solution. Infeeding is synchronized within the controller with wrapping by a matter of microseconds. Two separate controllers – with the addition of a conventional ‘black box' robot control -- would have resulted in 100 to 150 millisecond communication rates.
The advanced robot is part of a complete packaging system offering integrated lines from the processing equipment to downstream packaging units, demonstrated by this system, which featured a gondola buffer system as well as transport systems.
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