Automatic Casepacker Makes Commercial Transition in Six-Month Field Test

The ProductPacker is designed to place tray packs into freezer totes or boxes at a rate of approximately one per second.

After more than a decade of development, Georgia Tech’s human-level performance robotic technology took a critical step forward when its automated casepacker began operating continuously on-line in Excel Corp.’s case-ready plant in Newnan, Ga. Marketed and distributed by CAMotion Inc. under the name ProductPacker, the system is designed to place tray packs into freezer totes or boxes at a rate of approximately one per second. The performance trials, which are funded by Georgia’s Traditional Industries Program for Food Processing with coordination through the Food Processing Advisory Council (FoodPAC), began last December and will run through the end of June.

The ProductPacker is installed on one of Excel’s pork product packing lines. The completely integrated system consists of the overhead robot, a tote handling mechanism with conveyor, a control cabinet, and a vision inspection cell equipped with a DVT sensor-based camera system.

While CAMotion, the Atlanta-based supplier of high-speed automation for the manufacturing and service sectors, has been instrumental in manufacturing the core robot, two other industry leaders have supplied ancillary equipment for the integrated system. One of the robot’s conveyors and its control cabinet were provided by Cryovac, a division of Sealed Air Corporation. Intralox, the world leader in modular plastic conveyor belting, provided belting materials for the tray and tote conveyors.

Georgia Tech engineers added a powered conveyor and a mechanism consisting of sensors and stops to transport the totes to the robot one at a time for packing.

The robot currently packs 1- to 5-pound shrink-wrapped trays of pork at speeds as high as 58 trays per minute. This packing rate far exceeds the productivity level of manual casepacking. This production rate is due largely to modifications made by CAMotion. In particular, CAMotion’s proprietary control software allows higher production speeds. According to Gary McMurray, Georgia Tech’s lead investigator on the performance trials and one of the original members of the prototype development team, this design enhancement allows the ProductPacker to operate at twice the speed of the original prototype.

“ This six-month field test is the first opportunity to demonstrate the robot’s capability in a production environment with plant personnel actually operating the robot,” says McMurray. This, he explains, places the team in a unique position to evaluate the production-readiness of the design.

In fact, Excel personnel have found operation of the robot is very user-friendly.

“ The system was designed with menus in both English and Spanish, allowing a diverse work group to easily operate the machine.  The touch screen menus on the casepacker are very easy to follow and understand. Our operator picked up on how to set the machine up right away and really took ownership of the casepacker,” says Jason Prince, project manager for Excel ’s Case Ready Division.

“The casepacker has given us the opportunity to automate the task of placing product into the totes along with performing a final quality inspection on every tray using the inline vision inspection system. This has resulted in reducing the labor requirements on the line while ensuring that our high quality standards are met,” adds Prince.

In addition to its packing reliability, the robot is also extremely versatile.

“ Our business as well as our customer’s needs are always changing.  I have been very impressed with the team’s ability to adjust to our changing requirements such as changing product codes, changing tote dimensions, and their ability to pack various tray sizes and packaging formats. They have met every challenge we have thrown at them with success,” notes Prince.

Steve Dickerson, chairman of CAMotion, says the system has performed up to expectations, and sees a huge potential for commercial success.

“ We believe there is a very large market for the system; our current estimates are at 3,000 units alone in the United States,” says Dickerson. In fact, Dickerson notes that CAMotion has already responded to purchase quote requests from several meat processing companies.

Dickerson further emphasizes that the ProductPacker provides a reliable and cost beneficial solution to an industry need that has existed for decades.

“ Virtually every casepacking line in the United States is manual. Our ProductPacker answers an industry need that’s been around for years, that being how to cost-effectively automate the process,” says Dickerson.

He notes that the ProductPacker exceeds the productivity of manual casepacking, packing 58 trays per minute when packing a single tray per cycle. It is capable of even higher throughput by picking up multiple trays at a time. However, for this particular application that was not required.

“ Not only is the ProductPacker quicker than manual casepacking, it is competitively priced at $45,000 for the core robot and about $80,000 for a completely integrated system,” says Dickerson. “This is relatively inexpensive based on industry standards, thus providing an excellent return on investment for processors,” adds Dickerson.