Pat Reynolds: Hello, I'm Pat Reynolds of Packaging World Magazine, here with a look at just a few of the new things seen and heard on day one of a very busy Pack Expo International in Chicago.
At Starview Packagings booth North-5728, one emphasis was on the kind of comprehensive automation that can be brought to a rotary blister packaging system by integrating additional packaging machinery functions. In this case, it was robotic product loading, plus laser coding, and 100% code inspection that were all being bundled with the Starview Machinery. According to Starview's Director of Sales and Marketing Rob van Gilson. The reason for going this route is simple enough; the demand for automation is greater than ever. And it's largely because customers buying Starview equipment want to avoid the hassle of looking for employees to hire. A good example of the strategy Starview is executing was on display at Pack Expo. The Model BSC 18-1418. It's a rotary blister packing machine with 18 stations with a rated speed of about 18 cycles a minute. The sequence of operation is picking and placing of paperboard front card insertion of clear blister into card robotic product bloating thanks to an Omron robot, and then placement of the paperboard backing card. But also integrated into the system is a videojet laser coder and a vision system from chaos to verify each code. As for controls integration that comes courtesy of Omron. According to Van Gilson, the system on display at Pack Expo is headed for a maker of medical devices.
