Robo palletising success
February 1st 2005

Reducing packaging for environmental reasons has been a long-standing objective for building block manufacturer, Thermalite, which is part of Marley Building Materials Ltd (MBM). This, together with demand for pallet free stacks of blocks, lead MBM to invest in a robotic handling system for its packaging area.

The pallet-free solution is to provide voids in the pack for fork truck lifting – which has an immediate effect on reducing packaging. But producing configurations for over seventeen different void packs was impossible for Thermalite’s dedicated systems, so robots were considered and several suppliers consulted.

Already using FANUC robots at its tile manufacturing plant in Beenham, MBN contracted FANUC to design and install the system at Thermalite.

The existing process equipment, which delivers a ‘cake’ of 28 columns of blocks every 150 seconds dictates the palletising cycle time. To achieve this, two independent cells of three robots each were supplied – each cell working from each end of the cake.

The robots essentially arrange and align the blocks into packs so that voids are in the correct place to facilitate forklifting.

A void sheet is placed on top of the void layer to protect blocks from forks when being handled. When the block is complete, the pack is conveyed to a fly strapping area where a clamping system pressure to the sides of the pack before straps are applied to avoid breakages.

“ Engineering a system of this complexity requires confidence between the two partners,” says HBM project manager, Steve Herriott. “Our confidence is such that MBN has already ordered a similar system to be installed in Thermalite’s Colsehill factory.”

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