Palletising goes robotic
March 1st 2007

Barr & Paatz are installing three fully automated palletising systems, designed for stacking 600mm2 access floor panels at the Kingspan plant in Hull.

The Totnes company modelled the customdesigned cells on its Cosimir 3D simulation software and employed finite element analysis to perfect the construction of the special vacuum pick-up tool.

Each cell incorporates Mitsubishi's latest 12kg class of 6-axis articulated robot, the RV-12SL, to offload the incoming 11kg floor panels and stack them onto pallets, inverting every other one for quality control purposes.

The fully integrated material handling cells also feature Interoll powered conveyor rollers, EcoSafe modular protective barriers and interlocked Sick C2000 safety light grids for safeguarding the pallet access apertures.

Kingspan's Stephen Williams commented on the venture’s success “We plan to take advantage of these improvements in palletising productivity. “We can foresee more robotic technology being introduced to automate other processes.”

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