Robotic Loading for a Sandwich Line

Company

This application was developed for a company specialising in prepared meals.

The company was experiencing strong growth in the sandwich market. To improve productivity, it wanted to invest in an automatic system for robotically loading sliced sandwich ingredients such as processed meat.

The thermoformer-loading robot had to receive products on two lanes from the slicer outfeed, preserve the two manual stations, load products into the cavities of the existing sandwich line, store excess products and release stored products when required.

Project & solution

To meet this requirement, JYGA recommended installing a thermoformer-loading cell.

The products are fed into an existing slicer. The slicer builds packs of slices on a stopped conveyor across two lanes. Two robots pick each pack from underneath and then load one pack into each pitch of the sandwich line.

During material changeovers, the system must be able to store packs. These packs are held on polycord conveyors. The buffer is emptied during the changeover, and the slicer then receives a signal indicating when normal production can restart.