Eliminating Worker Injury with Stacking Robots

Stack­ing and de-stack­ing objects is tedious and can be dan­ger­ous to man­u­al work­ers. Stack­ing automa­tion can vir­tu­al­ly elim­i­nate work­er injuries due to heavy lift­ing and repet­i­tive motion. Man­u­fac­tur­ing indus­tries rely on press trans­fer and stack­ing robots for mate­r­i­al han­dling.

KUKA​’s new KR QUAN­TEC series include pal­letiz­ing robots with a new com­pact design. The use of lighter com­po­nents allow the robots to achieve fast stack­ing times. The robots come in ver­sions that can offer pay­loads of 120, 180, and 240 kg. All com­mon types of pack­ages can be safe­ly rout­ed with­in the arm’s cas­ing due to the hol­low wrist with a 60mm aper­ture. KUKA spec­i­fies the pur­pose of these mod­els is to boost pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and ensure accu­rate, high-per­for­mance operations.

AMF Automa­tion Tech­nolo­gies select­ed KUKA as its robot­ics sup­pli­er for its meat food dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem. The KUKA KR 180 PA pal­letiz­ing robot will be used in the meat stack­ing and de-stack­ing sys­tem. This will allow man­u­fac­tur­ers to improve work­ing con­di­tions as well and increase through­put. Automat­ing the labor-inten­sive stack­ing and de-stack­ing process­es speeds up pro­duc­tion as robots stack the prod­ucts in food bas­kets via con­vey­or. When the bas­kets return emp­ty, the robots will de-stack: they can be used at both the begin­ning and the end of the meat pack­ing process. 

Cen­tric­i­ty Corporation’s VER­SA-STACK Parts Han­dling Sys­tem is a mod­u­lar sys­tem that is sim­ple to install. It allows the user to cre­ate stacks of dif­fer­ent com­po­nents uti­liz­ing Feed­scape ID feed­ing tech­nol­o­gy. Feed­scape feeds each com­po­nent onto index­ing pins on a dial plate. The com­plet­ed stack is deposit­ed to the robot or pick and place unit. Usu­al­ly unaf­fect­ed by jams, the sys­tem pro­duces sig­nif­i­cant increased in throughput.

Stack­ing automa­tion increas­es pro­duc­tion as the dan­ger­ous heavy-lift­ing tasks are left to robots. Robots​.com inte­grates new and used stack­ing robots into all kinds of fac­to­ries. Con­tact Robots​.com online or at 877−762−6881 for a free quote or assis­tance in decid­ing which robot is right for you.