Application Note: Packaging and Palletizing for a Chemical Manufacturer

Our customer is a chemical manufacturer selling into the consumer products, agricultural and industrial markets. They’re based in western North Carolina and, coming out of the pandemic, their business exploded. Unfortunately, like many small to medium sized businesses, finding and keeping labor was an issue. With a turnover rate of over 80%, they realized something needed to be done differently.They engaged Cross Automation to discuss automation opportunities, specifically in their packaging and palletizing applications.

In their packaging and palletizing facility, finished bulk material comes into the facility and is put into large hoppers. It is then fed down into thirteen packaging lines which form, fill and seal the product into bags. Operators would then put the bags into boxes and the boxes onto pallets. The customer wanted to start with the palletizing process and have a palletizer flexible enough to run multiple box sizes, if necessary.

The Innovation Team at Cross Automation designed a palletizer using a Fanuc industrial robot with a custom multi- zone vacuum gripper, enclosed in a safety fence with light curtains. The application required an industrial robot, as opposed to a cobot, due to the weight of the boxes being moved and the cycle time, eight seconds. In addition, each cell includes a reject station prior to the robot, in order to separate the unfinished or malformed boxes before they could be grabbed by the robot. It also has an automated break detection system to improve safety and protect the robot from harm.

The system had additional complexity, because not only did the robot need to load boxes onto a pallet, but it also needed to pick up and place the pallet prior to loading. The boxes were a maximum of 42 pounds but the pallets could be up to 70 pounds. In addition, pallets aren’t completely solid, so they can’t be gripped as well as a box. The Cross team solved this by designing a custom gripper which had six zones which turn on and off, depending on what is being lifted.

Cross and the company have now installed nine palletizers and they are working very much as intended. During the quote process, Cross provided an estimated payback on the project of 22 months and it looks well on track to achieve that, if not beat it. Due to the success of the project, the customer is now ready to tackle the more complex application of packaging, specifically taking the sealed bags of product and putting them into boxes.