Robot Palletizing vs Conventional Palletizing

Pal­letiz­ing equip­ment comes in many shapes and sizes. While there are many dif­fer­ent pal­letiz­ing equip­ment lay­outs, man­u­fac­tur­ers real­ly have to eval­u­ate their process­es to see if robot­ic pal­letiz­ing will be more ben­e­fi­cial for your facil­i­ty than man­u­al palletizing.

Some impor­tant things to con­sid­er are:

• The size, weight and shape of your products
• The con­struc­tion and sta­bil­i­ty of your products
• The sec­ondary pack­ag­ing involved
• Any pat­tern-form­ing capa­bil­i­ties avail­able dur­ing production

Con­ven­tion­al pal­letiz­ers can cre­ate a pat­tern when load­ing, but robots can make user-friend­ly loads. Robot pal­letiz­ers can also han­dle dif­fi­cult loads and high speeds of production.

Robot pal­letiz­ers are great solu­tions for appli­ca­tions where the prod­uct demands pre­ci­sion. Bags and pails are per­fect exam­ples of this. The need to pre­cise­ly place items like pails on pal­lets is nec­es­sary, for exam­ple, because pails need to be placed on top of each oth­er in a very spe­cif­ic way, ​“nest­ing” on the lid of the pail below it.

Robot pal­letiz­ers also have the abil­i­ty to work in con­fined spaces or envi­ron­ments full of dust and oth­er par­ti­cles, which make them great for bag pal­letiz­ing applications.

While robot pal­letiz­ers can move up to 70 cas­es per minute, con­ven­tion­al pal­letiz­ers can work at very high speeds, pro­cess­ing 200 cas­es per minute.

Since con­ven­tion­al pal­letiz­ers nev­er have to pick up a prod­uct, as opposed to just mov­ing a prod­uct, they can han­dle sev­er­al dif­fer­ent types of prod­ucts with lit­tle to no prob­lem. Pal­letiz­ing robots can also han­dle this type of ver­sa­til­i­ty and flex­i­bil­i­ty if they have their end-of-arm-tool­ing switched to fit the product.

Con­ven­tion­al pal­letiz­ing is best for high-speed appli­ca­tions that have reduced prod­uct pack­ag­ing and com­plex pat­tern form­ing. Robot­ic pal­letiz­ing is best when pal­letiz­ing on a low­er-speed, mul­ti-line sys­tem, espe­cial­ly when han­dling bags, pails and oth­er spe­cif­ic types of materials.

Man­pow­er is also a fac­tor when decid­ing between con­ven­tion­al and robot­ic pal­letiz­ing. These machines are very dif­fer­ent in their oper­a­tion and main­te­nance needs. Man­u­fac­tur­ers need to con­sid­er whether their staff would be able to learn the more com­plex robot­ic appli­ca­tions over the con­ven­tion­al applications.

Robots​.com, a cer­ti­fied inte­gra­tor of Motoman, KUKA, ABB, Uni­ver­sal Robots, and Fanuc robots, can work with cus­tomers who choose robot­ic pal­letiz­ing for their facilities. 

For more infor­ma­tion about what Robots​.com can do to help you auto­mate your pal­letiz­ing sys­tem, con­tact our sales depart­ment online or at 877−762−6881.