bb guide - Beverage & Brewing 2023/2024

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Filling · Packaging · Labeling
Packaging machine manufacturer Schubert presents its production-ready cobot
Simple, flexible automation – beyond the machine
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Strong competition and falling margins
are putting pressure on manufacturers of
consumer goods to improve the efficiency
of their packaging processes. Most often,
the solution is automation. With the new
cobot from Schubert, which is now ready
for series production, its’ capabilities can be
implemented from the very start of a packaging
machines infeed – with exceptional flexibility
and without requiring any programming effort.
Until now, automation processes for the packaging of
food, confectionery, cosmetics and similar products
have for the most part been limited to the packaging
machine itself. Feeding is often done manually,
because processes such as placing products from
a crate onto a belt, separating them, orienting them
correctly or sorting them are quite complex and rarely
cost-effective to automate. With the development
of its tog.519 cobot, Schubert now has a new,
extremely fl exible and very easy-to-operate solution
at hand that takes consumer goods manufacturers
a decisive step forward.
Pick & place with a high cycle rate
when picking unsorted product
The Schubert cobot is designed for high-performance
pick & place applications with lightweight products:
At up to 90 cycles per minute, the tog.519 picks up
a wide variety of products or packaging materials
from the crate or conveyor and places them in any
conceivable target destination – without the need
for complex programming with only the tool needing
to be matched to the product. Benjamin Brand,
responsible for sales and integration in Schubert’s
Cobot team, explains: “We built the vacuum unit in
our tog.519 based on our proven F4 robots. Together
with the individually designed robot tools, some of
which are 3D printed, we can process a wide variety
of products – including unpackaged chocolates as
well as plastic components for spray bottles. In the
cobot, we have brought together all of Schubert’s
in-depth pick & place experience.”
So far, the product groups pre-trained in the AI include pouches, lids, pumps and bottles, as well as pralines and chocolate.
An AI-supported image processing system developed
by Schubert is behind the cobot’s ease of use. It
recognises the products as they are picked up as well
as the environment in which they are to be placed.
The cobot’s neural network is so extensively trained
that the robot can immediately process new products
from the same product group: for example, pouches
(sachets, fl owpacks, stand-up pouches, sealed-rim
pouches, etc.) of different sizes or bottles of different
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Beverage & Brewing · Suppliers‘ Guide 2023/24