Delta intelligent robot workstation upgrades packaging industry for smart manufacturing

With the development of smart manufacturing and the transformation and upgrading of the manufacturing industry, industrial robots have become an important application in the global market. This technology has made giant strides in recent years. Following the trends, Delta took the lead on development opportunities by setting up teams six years ago. Relying on strong R&D capabilities, the teams were devoted to developing the basic hardware layer of robots. At the same time, they accumulated excellent experience in software development technologies by integrating big data, and cloud computing into this area. By continuously putting their projects into practice, they accumulated rich experience in machine tools, food, electronic products, electronic motors, rubber and plastics, footwear, and other industries, and integrated vision, perception, interaction, and other technologies to achieve refined production operations that can replace human resources such as assembly, gluing, transfer, soldering, transportation, and more.

The packaging industry is typically labor intensive and characterized by repeated operations and long working hours. Traditional packaging equipment is unable to accommodate products of different sizes and shapes, thus flexible and highly-effective robots have been well received in the packaging industry. In recent years, the robots used in this industry have increased rapidly. The Delta robot workstation solution for the packaging industry, such as Delta’s intelligent up and bottom carton assembly robot workstation, possesses high-speed grabbing, precise positioning, secure placement, efficient operation and other functions. It enables robots to completely replace manpower, improves production efficiency and product quality, and achieves quick changeover production for diversified sales.

The up and bottom carton, also called a lid and base box, is an ordinary paper packing box. It’s easy to open and close, thus beneficial for product promotion and advertising, improving the added-value of products. It’s extensively applied to various types of product packaging such as hard carton gift boxes, shoe boxes, underwear boxes, shirt boxes, mobile phone boxes, and others.

After the printing and corner cutting of the traditional up and bottom carton, it is still necessary to rely on manual or semi-manual auxiliary equipment to carry out the mechanical nailing process. The single-angle gluing is completed by nailing the nails in turn, and the four corners must be glued four times for the glue sticking process. This practice requires a large amount of manpower, has relatively low production efficiency, and adds to materials and manufacturing cost.

Using a carton former solves many problems in the prior art such as low manufacturing efficiency, high cost, assembly line occupying large spaces, and others. The carton former adopts a programmable logic controller (PLC), photoelectric tracking system, hydraulic and pneumatic system, human-machine interface, and more, and thus achieves automatic feeding of paper, paper gluing, automatic cardboard conveying, cardboard forming by gluing four corners, positioning gluing, cardboard molding and other processes that can be finished by only one machine. This significantly improves the production efficiency. With the use of photoelectric positioning, the gluing machine positioning of the up and bottom carton is simple in structure and convenient to adjust, but speed and precision are incompatible. When the manufacturing speed and quantity are increased, the positioning precision cannot be guaranteed. While manufacturing 3C product packaging boxes such as for mobile phone cases, which require high precision, the problem of unsatisfactory speed is revealed.

Besides effectively solving the problems above, Delta’s intelligent up and bottom carton assembly robot workstation dramatically improves the automatic manufacturing effectiveness for up and bottom cartons. First, it adopts a SCARA industrial robot and visual system in the paper gluing area to replace traditional optoelectronic positioning, which results in high-speed and high-precision gluing. Second, it provides customized software to guarantee personalized operation and excellent time efficiency when changing products. This solution adopts the multi-axis motion controller DVP50MC series, the servo drive ASDA-A2-E series and the EtherCAT busbar-type configuration to ensure the high-speed and high efficiency of the entire machine.

Dynamic illustration of the intelligent up and bottom carton assembly equipment

Intelligent up and bottom carton assembly robot workstation system framework

With DRS40L as the actuator, the SCARA industrial robot is mainly responsible for grabbing cardboard from a fixed position and putting the cardboard on package paper from the package paper source. The visual system DMV is used to collect information. It takes photos and processes images of the box paper and obtains the current location and angle information of the cardboard. To ensure the entire machine is operating with high efficiency, the latest Delta EtherCAT busbar motion controller DVP50MC11T is used. Delta’s ASD-A2-E series servo drive, which also supports the EtherCAT busbar motion controller, is responsible for belt feeding, grabbing the hand-grab box, forming, pressing, and more. The Delta VFD-EL series frequency converter is used to send the rubber-covered roll to get glue, convey paper, and others. HMI adopts the DOP-100 series to achieve human-machine interaction and send temperature
orders and on-and-off orders to the temperature machine with RS485 as the upper machine. Delta’s DTE series temperature controller tests the temperature of the glue and ensures the forming quality of products. Delta industrial graphic control system SCADA software monitors the entire production line and uploads production data to the MES system. Delta solutions also include operation software working with the up and bottom workstation, which has one button calibration, visual operation, quick changeover, real time rectification and other functions. In terms of operation it greatly reduces the time cost and maintenance learning cost for clients.

Delta’s smart manufacturing is not limited to the up and bottom carton assembly robot station for the packaging industry. Delta also provides many mature application solutions in materials sorting, labeling, packaging/canning, stacking, and many others, to help various industries transform and upgrade and achieve smart manufacturing.