FOOD & BEVERAGE
W
ith technological advances in the food production sector coming thick and to know when to make the leap into smart manufacturing. Luckily,
systems with the ability to meet all of today’s challenges, as well as adapt to tomorrow’s, now exist.
MPE’s i3 Tray Sealer, for example, leverages the power of OMRON’s SYSMAC Platform processes now and to create, test and deploy additional functionality in the future. next-generation, future-proof tray sealing could save your business time, money and resources for years to come.
PERFECT HARMONY OF SOFTWARE AND HARDWARE
The i3 Tray Sealer is an all-electric, high-throughput, small footprint solution for meat product, fresh produce and ready meal production lines. It is powered by the SYSMAC environment (IDE) to bring logic, motion, robotics, human machine interface (HMI), vision, sensing, safety and 3D simulation together in one single platform.
Using this approach, MPE has developed a range of time-, energy- and resource-saving features all designed to help customers stay ahead in this highly competitive industry.
SMART TRAY SEALING SOLUTIONS FOR GREENER, MORE EFFICIENT PROCESSES FOR YEARS TO COME
GREENER TO RUN
John Hodgkiss, MPE’s technical director on the i3, said, “One of the key features is that the machine is all electric. There are no pneumatics, which provides energy savings and a quicker payback on investment.”
Calculations in the United States, for example, found the machine cost just $8.50 a day to run. local energy costs, Hodgkiss said it usually added up to a saving of at least 50 percent. machine means that producers may be eligible for green Government grants, such as those offered in the UK.
A total of £500m of funding, for example, is available through the UK’s Industrial Energy Transformation Fund (IETF), which has been designed to help businesses with high energy use invest in solutions that cut their energy bills and emissions. Various capital allowance and tax incentive programmes also encourage businesses to invest in green machinery.
26 DECEMBER/JANUARY 2024/25 | FACTORY&HANDLINGSOLUTIONS EASIER TO INSTALL
The absence of compressed air combined with the use of OMRON’s programmable logic controllers (PLCs), also makes the i3 easier and quicker to install than traditional tray sealers, contributing to a more rapid return on investment.
“Because we are using the OMRON PLC, you do not need any additional motion controls. Everything is done within the EtherCAT, which uses just one controller and a cable to the servo drive,” said Hodgkiss.
This, he added, reduced the number of installation process. “From an electrical point of view, you could wire the machine in in a usually take twice as long as that,” he said.
ENHANCED EFFICIENCY
The i3 can seal up to 20 cycles a minute with up to eight trays per cycle, equating to a throughput of around 160 per minute. But the
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