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Vacuum tooling reduces changeover time

The system was so successful at boosting speed on an end-of-line packaging solution for bread products that the OEM applied for and received a patent.

Successful suction. The programmable dense-cup-population tooling uses a total of 128 vacuum cups to pick freshly baked buns and other products from primary packaging lines to bread trays
Successful suction. The programmable dense-cup-population tooling uses a total of 128 vacuum cups to pick freshly baked buns and other products from primary packaging lines to bread trays

AMF Bakery Systems, the world’s leading manufacturer of high speed bakery equipment, makes robotic systems that commercial bakeries use to transfer freshly baked buns and other products from primary packaging lines to bread trays bound for distribution centers. The company saw a need in the market for a flexible, light-weight, end-of-arm robotic tooling with a dense population of vacuum cups. AMF envisioned that each cup could be independently turned on and off, allowing the same tooling to pick and pack different patterns of products.

Existing solutions required the tooling to be changed out for each different loading pattern or product size. This extended changeover times, and in some cases it required maintenance engineers to perform the changeovers instead of the line operators. The existing methods also required the sub-elements of the pick patterns to be isolated as the tooling would pick up whichever product was underneath it in the pick area. In other words, if the pick pattern were two packages of buns, for example, only two packages could be sent down the conveyor to the robot at a time.

On some production lines, buns had to be packed into trays by hand because the tooling in use could not do the required pick and place. This situation, of course, required substantial labor.

Festo helped AMF Bakery Systems design a programmable dense-cup-population tooling that solved these problems on the packaging line. The new system quickly became part of AMF Bakery Systems standard offering and remains so today. The tool design and the design for supplying vacuum, a path for both electrical and control cables to the tool, proved unique enough to have patented.

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