RSS FEEDS
More Categories
This 36-axis bag-in-box system occupies minimal floor space, installs easily, and is controlled by a single PC.When a major cereal maker looked for a way to reinvent bag-in-box packaging, they turned to the Aagard Group for a servo-centric solution. Aagard responded with a 36-axis side-seam gluer/cartoner/case packer/palletizer that, says Aagard’s Brent Smith, occupies about a sixth of the floor space and costs about half of what might have been required for a more traditional solution. Fed by two baggers, the new system cranks out 120 cartons/min.
“Counting the smart-belt infeed, it’s five unit operations in one frame,” says Smith. “We can ship the complete unit—cartoner, case packer, palletizer—in a sea container that has an 8’ x 8’ opening. And because it’s all on one frame, we can install this system and get it into production in about a tenth of the time it might take with more conventional approaches.”
The traditional bag-in-box system opens a knocked-down carton that has a pre-sealed manufacturer’s joint, puts the blank in a flighted conveyor, and then pushes a bag of cereal into the carton. But the patent-applied-for Aagard system uses flat carton blanks that have an unsealed manufacturer’s joint. Cereal bags are fed into a bucket, the carton is formed around the bucket, and the bucket is then pulled out.
All 36 axes of motion are driven by Bosch Rexroth servo motors and drives. A single Beckhoff PC controls the whole works. The same PC handles logic and motion.
“From the PC we have a PCI card with two fiber optic cables coming out of it,” says Smith. “Those two fiber optic cables connect the PC to the motion/machine control world. We run SERCOS I/O as well as SERCOS drives. It makes for a really simple, clean, quick installation.
“Is that Windows-based Pentium PC as robust as a PLC? No, but that’s largely because the PLC doesn’t have Windows on it. Let’s face it, anytime you have an operating system that’s Windows-based, people can load programs into it. How could that ever be as stable as that black box of a PLC over there? But the gap in robustness has gotten a lot smaller.”
To address any residual concerns this particular customer might have about what might be called the “robustness” issue, Aagard provided, for $3꽤, a backup PC with all the same software pre-loaded. Should it ever be needed, says Smith, it shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes to plug it in and resume packing.
“It’s four bolts, a few cables, and you’re back up and running,” he adds.
indicates a sponsored article that was submitted directly to this Web site by the supplier, and was not handled by the PW editorial staff. Packaging World may share your contact information with our sponsors, as detailed in our Privacy Policy. Packaging World will not share your information with a sponsor whose content you have not reviewed.