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Reliability comes to palletizing

Replacing a palletizing robot’s end-of-arm tool provides reliability on multiple levels.

The Premier Tech Chronos finger gripper keeps bags attractively uniform, allowing them to be palletized efficiently.
The Premier Tech Chronos finger gripper keeps bags attractively uniform, allowing them to be palletized efficiently.

Even companies whose names are recognized worldwide must periodically re-evaluate equipment in order to maintain market dominance. When one such manufacturer learned that an outdated palletizing robot gripper had to be replaced, they turned to Premier Tech Chronos for a retrofit.

One problem that needed to be solved was a lack of reliability. Because the plant’s existing palletizing robot was manufactured by a company that outsourced components, the customer might wait months for replacement parts.

The second problem was that suction cups on the robot’s original end-of-arm tool (EOAT) deformed bags by creating a pyramid one-half to one-inch high in the center of each bag. Not only did that result in unattractive bags, but it also created palletizing problems because deformed bags occupy more space. The resulting pallets were unnecessarily tall, requiring more wrapping material and decreasing stacking efficiency.

These problems could be remedied by Premier Tech Chronos, the customer realized, since it was pleased with the performance of the EOAT that Premier Tech Chronos had designed and installed elsewhere within the same facility. It was decided that the outdated vacuum gripper on the palletizing robot’s arm would be replaced by a Premier Tech Chronos finger gripper.

One advantage of the finger gripper is that because it lifts bags from underneath, it transfers bags without deforming them, producing uniform pallets. This makes it possible to create stacks that are four pallets high, which is more efficient than the shorter stacks that occupied more space in the customer’s warehouse before the retrofit.

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