Mondelez in Herentals, Belgium, has decided to use electric drives for a new system for mixing chocolate Easter eggs. The main reasons for this decision were lower energy consumption, improved safety and greater flexibility in controlling speeds and positions. An ingenious system of conveyor belts ensures that each pack of Easter chocolate eggs has a nice mix of flavours.
Mondelez is a major international player in the food industry that has many well-known brands such as Côte d'Or, Milka and Oreo in its portfolio. Both the biscuit and chocolate divisions of the business have a factory in Herentals. The biscuit factory is where Lu's biscuits are made, among other treats. Mondelez Chocolates produces Leo biscuits, Côte d'Or bars and Easter eggs.
The new Ergomix project supports the production of Easter eggs,a production process that runs practically all year round so that there is enough stock at Easter to meet the sudden demand for this seasonal product. The name of the project refers to its original aim of improving ergonomics for operators. In the past, the eggs were mixed by manually combining bowls with different flavours, which was a very labour-intensive process. This is now done fully automatically in the new system.
As soon as the eggs leave the moulding line and are individually packaged, they are transported on a conveyor belt to the new system below, where they are sorted into pallet crates according to flavour. These bowls are then prepared for mixing by a robot or picked up by a mobile robot for temporary storage in a warehouse. As soon as all the flavours needed to produce a mix are ready, the eggs are transported to specific positions on a wide conveyor belt using funnels so that all the flavours are lined up next to each other. At the end, the eggs are returned to a pallet container, where they are perfectly mixed.
An initial challenge for the drive technology was that the eggs had to be filled and distributed evenly into the pallet containers, otherwise they would not be level and that would make stacking them impossible. The second challenge was positioning the funnels above the conveyor belt on which the mix is assembled. This had to be a flexible system as not every mix contains the same number of different flavours. Finally, a suitable drive had to be found for the robot gripper, which has to move the 150 kg pallet containers.
"Our initial thinking for this project was not to use pneumatics," says Bob Aerts from the technical department at Mondelez. "The idea was that electric drives perform better in terms of energy consumption, and it is also easier to implement all aspects of machinery safety. We presented this to Festo, and they not only understood our initial thoughts and the applications for which we wanted to build a system, but were also able to offer all the components that we needed to make it happen."
For Festo, the demand for electric drives is certainly not new. "We see this segment grow by more than 20% per year," says Johan De Pauw, Sales Engineer at Festo. "Certain applications are difficult or even impossible to implement using compressed air because of the speeds or the flexibility needed for positioning. With electric drives, there are far fewer restrictions in terms of design and production. In addition, the total cost of ownership for this application is lower with electric drives than with pneumatic ones."
Betecem was responsible for planning the system, with Koen Roobaert, Application Engineer at Festo, advising on the choice of components. Alax Automation was called in for the programming. "The collaboration went very smoothly," says Bob Aerts. "One of the advantages of Festo was that, right from the offer phase, all components were provided with links to all the documentation and files that could be used for engineering and sizing. This meant that everyone had the right information to get started right away.