Acmi has recently completed the supply of series of robots Mod. Condor at the production site of Surgiva, in the province of Trento. The company based in Fornovo was in charge of supplying a returnable glass line for 30.000 bott./hr, the formats were 0,5 - 0,75 and Lt 1 bottles.

The returnable glass line is characterised by the use of the Condor robot in all its possible applications: palletiser, depalletiser, crater and decrater.  The insertion of the robot demonstrates the great versatility of the machine which reaches the maximum efficiency levels thanks to the appropriate gripping heads purposefully studied by Acmi.

In particular Acmi installed four Condor robots, two at the beginning of the line with the function of depalletiser and decrater  and two at the end of the line with the function of palletiser and crater. The four robots where supplied and installed in different moments of time and substituted the traditional crater machines which where less flexible and less performing. If we look in detail, the depalletising robot has a capacity of 450 Kg and handles the crates containing the empty bottles moving them onto the conveyors that transport them onto the decrating robot. This second robot is capable of removing 48 bottles every cycle and transfer them onto Acmi conveyors. At this stage the bottles carryout all the phases typical of a returnable line until reaching the last two Condor robots that handle the packaging process. The third robot has a crater function with a production speed of four crates per cycle, this machine is equipped with an intelligent anti-pressure infeed system which protects both the labels and bottles. The last Condor robot carries out the palletisation phase and prepares the product for stockage in the warehouses until their subsequent delivery. All of the robots are commanded by an easy to use operators panel, and thanks to their disposition on the line may be controlled by one single operator. 

ADVANTAGES

A line comprising the Condor robot instead of the traditional crater machine demonstrates advantages in terms of space occupied, reliability and overall performance. Furthermore, the simplicity of passing from one format to another in a completely automatic way and the possibility of implementing new formats without the need of carrying out any modifications or any mechanical interventions, making this machine an interesting medium-long term investment.