A West Australian salt producer recently contracted Accuweigh to incorporate an automatic bag top former and bag closer together with a robot palletiser into their existing bagging line to minimise the labour requirements associated with manually handling filled bags of salt. The automatic bag top former eliminates the operator task of presenting open filled bags to a sewing machine or heat seale
When the open filled bag is detected by the bag top former, two vertical prongs extend into the top of the open filled bag whilst moving along the conveyor and stretches the bag evenly in opposite directions. The bag top former continues to hold the top of the bag in the stretched position, whilst two horizontal arms at the front and rear of the filled bag come together above the head of product, guiding the top of the filled bag between the guide rails leading to the automatic sewing machine. Once in the guide rails, the vertical prongs retract and the horizontal arms extend and then they return to the start position ready for the next bag, whilst the previous filled bag is presented to the automatic sewing machine.
The filled bags are closed by the automatic sewing machine, then ‘turned’ in a bottom first configuration through a bag flattener for even distribution of product in the bag, followed by a pneumatic operated bag side guide to correctly position the filled bag onto the powered roller bag pick-up conveyor for palletising.
The Fuji-Ace EC-141 robot palletiser automatically picks up the filled bags from the bag pick-up conveyor and stacks the bags onto the pallet presented by the pallet feed conveyor, which is dispensed from the automatic pallet dispenser. This ensures continuous operation of the system at all times. The robot palletiser comes complete with control panel incorporating a multi- function user friendly touch screen display, hand held ‘teaching box’ for ease of programming, energy conserving servo motors and heavy duty support base.
Included with the robot palletiser is safety fencing to enclose the palletising area with guard fencing and light curtains. Accuweigh is very conscious of the safety issues involved with a robot palletising installation and take great care in providing a robust, reliable and safe system. This item fully complies with all aspects of as4024-1 category 2 safeguarding of machinery.
Accuweigh has branches in all mainland states with full sales and service capabilities to competently handle all your weighing, bagging and palletising needs.