Page 35 - trends in automation

“A particular challenge of the
design is the cap’s opposing
side hinges.”
Julian Tarratt, Sales Manager at PCE Automation
T The ‘Spoonkler’ lid
manufactured by RPC Halstead,
for its end customer Bart
Ingredients, is an innovative
flip-top cap that can be opened in two
ways, either to reveal a collection of
small holes through which the spice
can be sprinkled, or a full opening
wide enough to fit a teaspoon. For this
demanding project RPC invested in
special manufacturing equipment from
PCE Automation. The new cap presented
some unique handling challenges
requiring an innovative mechanism
designed by PCE with support from the
Festo application engineering team.
Design challenge
“A particular challenge of the design is
the cap’s opposing side hinges, which
enables it to be opened in either spoon
or sprinkle mode,” says Julian Tarratt,
Sales Manager at PCE Automation.
“We have used Festo equipment in our
machines for a number of years and we
are always pleased with the wide range,
high quality and reliability, which are
vital to us being confident in delivering
high performance machines to our
customers. So naturally, for this project,
we turned to Festo again, but even with
the range we needed to do something
special.”
In addition to the unique hinges, there
were a number of additional challenges
and constraints. First, the robot had
to be designed with a small footprint
so it could fit easily next to the plastic
injection moulding machine. Second,
to remove the tooling from the plastic
moulding machine, a crane needed to
fit between the machine and the robot.
The robot arm that collects the moulded
caps therefore needed to be completely
retractable from the moulding machine,
to allow the crane access when
required.
Finally, the machine required more
operations than are typically used in
alternative cap moulding applications
in order to close the caps’ two opposing
hinges, which need to be shut directly
after moulding.
Bespoke solution required
PCE Automation designed a side entry
robot that uses a Festo high speed
electric axis and pneumatics. However,
as the electric axis needed to be fully
retractable, PCE Automation adapted
one of the electro-mechanical belt drive
axis and designed a bespoke solution.
The company’s specialists came up with
an ingenious method of piggy-backing
two linear electric axes together, to
form a telescopic arm that could be fully
withdrawn from the injection moulding
machine, therefore enabling the crane
easy entry.
Issue 23 trends in automation
Synergies 32 – 33
The robot had to be designed with a small
footprint so it could fit easily next to the
plastic injection moulding machine.