FEATURE FACTORY AUTOMATION
INTEGRATED AUTOMATION: A packaging solution for demanding production environments
L
ocated in the south of Denmark, Gram Equipment is one of the world’s
leading manufacturers of equipment for the industrial production of ice cream. The company delivers tailor-made production lines to ice cream producers and other food-processing firms looking for flexible integrated solutions. These specially designed solutions cover
applications from individual assembly lines all the way up to complete production plants and comprise equipment for moulding, extrusion, filling, wrapping and packing as well as freezers, ingredient feeders and remanufacturing and upgrade kits. With more of its customers looking to deploy increasingly agile and more flexible storage, production and packaging solutions, Gram Equipment is always looking for ways to enhance and evolve its product range, to help these customers keep up with the very latest industry production and market consumer demands. One such machine designed to offer
flexibility and agility is the company’s GCS. The newest addition to its line-up of automated packing solutions, the GCS uses flex picker robots to deliver products into cartons with flexibility and speed. At the heart of this new machine is an Allen- Bradley automation, motion and safety solution from Rockwell Automation. Gram Equipment is a member of the
Rockwell Automation PartnerNetwork program as an OEM Program Participant. Members of this program demonstrate a commitment to offer machines and equipment that help manufacturers improve business agility, optimise productivity, and increase business performance. Through the use of Rockwell Automation products, technology and industry expertise, these PartnerNetwork members also help end users achieve sustainability and safety- compliance objectives. The GCS machine has been developed
specifically for the packaging of ice creams. In operation it takes individually wrapped ice creams fed on a conveyor from a preceding Gram production machine and then places a predefined number and pattern (colour/flavour mix) into cardboard boxes.
14 SEPTEMBER 2017 | FACTORY EQUIPMENT
PACKAGING VARIETIES The automation solution has to control a number of features, including the automatic balancing of different product flavours, simultaneous production of different multi-flavour packs, simultaneous production of different pack patterns and easy changeover between different pack/carton sizes and pattern formats, with minimal intervention. All of which has to be done at a speed that does not cause a bottleneck to up and downstream processes. Packing formats can vary between flavours and product layers, and different flavours can be interleaved vertically or horizontally. According to Anders G. Torbensen, vice
president sales and marketing at Gram Equipment: “This machine has been designed to integrate as effectively as possible with other Gram Equipment machines in production lines, so we made the decision to develop an automation and motion solution based on Allen-Bradley products. We saw many advantages to having the same control system as those on the rest of line.” The GCS has an Allen-Bradley
ControlLogix programmable automation controller (PAC) at the core of the control solution. Depending on how many robots the GCS system is equipped with (two or four), the number of controlled axes varies, but the biggest
Automated machine solutions offer an array of benefits, and on a conveyor production line the time that is saved can help increase output
GCS system has 31 Allen-Bradley Kinetix 5700 servo-drive-controlled axes and six Allen-Bradley PowerFlex 525 variable- frequency drive-controlled axes. Three servo drives are used for each
delta robot (XYZ movement) with an additional drive used to rotate the tool. Two servo drives are used for the carton carrier, two for the carton outlet and two for the box stop. Four servo drives provide the product movement on the pocket conveyor, another four are used for the product in-feed and four for the pullnose (product drop). The six PowerFlex variable-frequency drives are used for carton in-feed and product receiving. As a result of its industry knowledge,
technical expertise and in-depth machine design capabilities coupled to the deployment of an advanced automation, motion and safety solution from Rockwell Automation, Gram equipment has developed a high-performance machine capable of processing up to 660 products per minute with up to four different product flavours in each layer. Capable of handling stick, bars and
sandwich formats, the line design is flexible enough to fit existing production facilities and its small footprint exploits limited and valuable plant real estate.
Rockwell Automation
www.rockwellautomation.com
/ FACTORYEQUIPMENT
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