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An automation hole in one

Wilson Sporting Goods puts golf balls in shrink sleeves three times faster since installing conveyorized system that now runs smoothly 24/7.

Shown here are the four-station conveyor pallets emerging from the shrink tunnel. Each station holds three shrink-sleeved balls.
Shown here are the four-station conveyor pallets emerging from the shrink tunnel. Each station holds three shrink-sleeved balls.

Chicago-based Wilson Sporting Goods is one of the few golf ball manufacturers to package golf balls in three-count shrink sleeves rather than traditional three-count folding cartons. The material costs two to three times less than folding cartons, and inventorying thousands of flat labels on rollstock has inventory advantages compared to stocking paperboard cartons. Besides, Wilson marketers believe that golfers respond to the novel look and feel of the brightly printed film once they open the telescoping paperboard box that serves as secondary packaging.

From 2002 until early 2004, the Humboldt, TN, packaging operation behind Wilson’s shrink-sleeved golf balls was largely a manual one. Five operators were required to package four dozen balls/min. But in 2004, an automated system was installed. On this line, 13 dozen balls per minute is the typical rate, and the number of operators has been reduced to four.

Key contributors to the automated solution include Handling Systems, Inc., a distributor of packaging equipment, and Industrial Design and Fabrication, a systems integrator and builder of custom industrial machinery. Handling Systems’ DeWayne McKinney suggested that a Bosch Rexroth system of work pallets moving on a closed-loop conveyor could be used to tie together empty sleeve handling, ball insertion into sleeves, heat shrinking of sleeves, and discharge of shrink-sleeved balls. Doug Sellers, then senior manufacturing engineer at the Humboldt plant, liked the idea.

“I knew the Bosch Rexroth line had modular components readily available, which meant we wouldn’t have to spend time or capital seeking a completely customized solution,” says Sellers, who recently left his position at Wilson. So Sellers, McKinney, and Industrial Design and Fabrication got together and designed an automated system around a Rexroth TSplus conveyor. Forming a rectangular circuit measuring about 12’ x 3’, the conveyor transports aluminum pallets measuring 160 mm x 400 mm (6.30” x 15.75”). Up to 14 pallets can be moving through the closed-loop system at a time. A Rockwell PLC controls the system and keeps everything synchronized.

Each pallet holds four stations and each station holds one film sleeve. The first stop along the closed-loop conveyor track is an EZ-100 automatic sleeve inserter from Axon. Taking flat, 2-mil, high-impact polyvinyl chloride shrink film from a roll, the machine forms the film into a tube and then cuts individual shrink sleeves in register from the tube, dropping each sleeve into a station on the Bosch pallet.

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