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Based on the XTS linear servo platform, these movers are instructed by a vision system as to the location of each layer of products. They then adjust themselves, in parallel with the product flow, to the placement of random biscuits as they are fed into the system. At the show, a row of 26 movers, arranged at an intersection with the infeed product flow, used vacuum end-of-arm tooling to gently pick up the biscuits, rearrange themselves from random to directly in-line, and carry them at a transverse 90-degree angle into waiting trays that had just been denested in parallel to the product infeed.

“The linear motor means that we have low acceleration and low vacuum,” Bossel says. “This makes for very gentle handling of the biscuits. Also, the machine’s footprint is very small, and we can do a lot of di erent pack styles.”

The machine moves at about 30 cycles/min, and with 26 independent movers, that means close to 800 biscuits/min. These speeds with extra gentle, low-acceleration movement are meant to complement more traditional delta robot pick-and-place o erings that may be faster, but given di ering acceleration and deceleration ranges, may also be less gentle.

At the booth, the IDH was also integrated with a Syntegon Pack 202 horizontal flow wrapper, with low back-pressure infeed, to form a turn-key system for packaging biscuits or cookies into trays that were then overwrapped with printed film. The company adds that this full system could use more readily recycled monomaterial films for the overwrap, or paperboard trays instead of plastic trays, to add to a brand’s desired sustainability profile. video of this system at pfwgo. to/7816 .

Weighing and conveying

Making its PACK EXPO International debut was the Yamato Gravimetric Flex Weigher (GFW), which the company says was designed with flexibility in mind (14). This bulk weigher features four weigh-heads to support target weights that range between 5 and 20 kg. According to the company, the Yamato GFW-1104CC scale o ers high speed with supreme