How item’s Eastern Canada team used innovation to meet a customers’ needs.

item Partner PharmaCos Machinery, who proudly serves the Eastern Canada region as a representative of item Expertise, has demonstrated just how innovative you can be with item products and robotics.

A customer approached the PharmaCos Machinery team with a defined budget and space restrictions that had to be accommodated when creating their solution. The end goal was to package 9 different formats of shrink and unshrink tubes into cases with a small foot palletizing system at the end of the line. The customer wanted a compact layout with the possibility of integrating new OEM, refurbished equipment, and PharmaCos Machinery’s own custom designs to make the project feasible.

The Process

The first step the PharmaCos Machinery team, led by General Manager Sebastian Strozynski, took was to design a long infeed conveyor that brought the tubes into a secondhand ABB spyder robot that had been adapted specifically for this application. The robot would pick up the tubes and lay them down into custom-designed pucks, manufactured with PharmaCos’ 3D printer.

The second step the team took was refurbishing a bundler, and into which they integrated a linear pick system assembled with item extrusion. Even the plastic shrink rolls under the machine and on top of the bundler were created using item extrusion. If the tubes did not need to be shrunk, a second option allowed them to continue the main conveyor until they reached the custom-made compact robotic case packer, built in an entirely item frame structure.

Specialized Skill

As a specialized integrator in automation, PharmaCos Machinery had the skill to program and mechanically align the three new OEM equipment pieces with their custom machines to make a fully automatic line. First, it was an Endoline Case Former from England, then a Wexxar Case Sealer from Vancouver, and finally a FlexLink collaborative palletizer. “For this scope of work,” said Strozynski, “the cobot was a perfect and great addition, as the boxes were not too heavy, and the line speed matched the customer’s requirements.”

While the integration of so many components and machines may be difficult or intimidating to some, PharmaCos Machinery Sales Engineer Alex Asfour explained it was quite the opposite in this case. “The user-friendly operator interface made the on-site training smoother,” Asfour detailed.

The conveyor line proved to be a demonstration of item Expert know-how on behalf of the PharmaCos team. The Eastern Canada team demonstrated exemplary creativity in design of an automated line while simultaneously respecting a client’s budget and space. “Our pride always comes from the client satisfaction,” said Sebastian Strozynski. “To see us perform as a team with [the client] and our capacity to use different quality brands and to integrate quality brands together to create a pleasing visual arrangement both pre-installation and on-site. The end result looks amazing standing on the client’s production floor. We’re looking forward to replicating this solution in future client’s facilities.”

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