Robotic palletizers use a robotic arm that lifts the products either one by one or in batches, stacking them on a nearby pallet. With this type of process, products can be palletized either one at a time, by row, or by layer depending on the type of end-of-arm tooling. These robots can also be equipped with vision systems to stack products very precisely and even overlap bags.
Advanced models can be equipped with a slip sheet dispenser, a pallet dispenser, and an exit pallet conveyor to move the load to the pallet wrapping machine. These features improve the utilization and speed of the machine. Compared to conventional palletizers, they also provide great handling and versatility thanks to the end of arm tooling and software.
Robotic palletizers are also extremely reliable with MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) rates, reaching up to 80,000 hours. Additionally, they have very short MTTR (Mean Time To Repair) rates. Having both a reliable palletizer supplier and the appropriate spare parts in inventory significantly increase uptime.
Although there is a wide range of configurations of robotic palletizers, here are two examples at each end of the spectrum:
The most basic versions of robotic palletizers include:
Obviously, the entry-level models will have more basic functionalities since they aren’t equipped with slip sheet or pallet dispensers, and the pallet will be located on the floor. Instead of being moved onto conveyors, the pallet would be picked up by a hand truck or forklift and manually replaced. Every time a pallet needs to be replaced, the robotic palletizer's operations must be paused until an empty pallet is replaced.
Fully automatic palletizers come with:
The palletizing process begins with an entry conveyor, which carries the products to the robotic arm while the pallet dispenser carries an empty pallet to the palletizing station. Then, the slip sheet dispenser layers a sheet over the pallet for the robotic arm to load the items. Once the empty pallet and the slip sheet are in place, the robotic arm starts picking and placing the items from the entry conveyor to the pallet until the pallet is fully loaded.
The exit conveyor moves the loaded pallet towards a stretch wrapping station. A forklift is then used for storage or transit, after which the process starts all over again. A great benefit of the fully automatic robot palletizer is that the pallet magazine can be refilled without stopping the system’s operations.
Some automatic palletizing systems replace the standard robotic arm with a cobot, which stands for collaborative robot. Cobots collaborate with plant staff instead of substituting them. Cobots add great value to a palletizer because it increases safety for all the employees surrounding the palletizer, as there are sensors in the arm that detect whether any people or objects are in its surroundings.
The main benefit is that cobots enable staff to work alongside the machine safely and maximizes floor space. It removes the need for any security fencing around the palletizer. The main disadvantages of Cobots compared to the standard robotic arms is in terms of efficiency. They have significantly lower weight capacities and do not operate as quickly.
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