Bottling Up Linear Motion

Bottling background

The home wares manufacturer had designed a new type of cleaning spray bottle for ergonomic ease and had to create a new bottling packaging line to handle bottle-filling. This production line was very complex and comprised many different operations. For the palletizing operation, empty bottles were loaded into pallets, with each pallet weighing up to 272 pounds. The pallets were then lowered onto a transfer platform to be filled, packaged, and shipped out.

To transfer the pallets from a holding stack onto the platform, the manufacturer needed a sophisticated handling system that was able to grab a layer of bottle boxes onto the lowering platform, which would then lower them onto the transfer conveyor. This required a system that could tolerate high moment loads and also provide thrust loads.

The PBC Linear solution

MTB actuators were the ultimately found to be the best product solution. Driven by a steel reinforced timing belt, each actuator now provides smooth linear guidance under heavy loads. Six MTB linear actuators were designed into a specialized palletizing robot to provide a complete mechatronic solution that performed all required tasks with ease. The palletizing robot would grab a pallet of empty bottles from the stack via two horizontal MTB055 actuators acting as the arms. Additionally, two vertical MTB080 actuators raised and lowered the horizontal arms. Both sets of actuators worked simultaneously to reliably complete the entire operation and move the boxes to the main conveyor in a matter of seconds.

Actuators deliver results

By providing the six actuators along with mounting accessories such as brackets, hinges and pneumatic dampers, PBC Linear was able to deliver a Cartesian assembly that integrated seamlessly with the remainder of the production line.