The cosmetics industry is changing. Pharmacy and supermarket shelves are continuously displaying new products and special series to win the favour of discerning customers. At the same time, stocks of finished products in manufacturers’ warehouses should not be too large, which suggests that production batch sizes need to be reduced. Whereas the focus used to be on high-performance mono-lines that could fill and pack only a standard product range, the focus today is on flexibility. Each cosmetic product, and its’ differing packaging format, requires its’ own set of format parts within the machine that form part of the overall filling and packing process. Up until now, existing packaging machines were rarely designed for this, however, which inevitably leads to very long format changeovers.
Each time the robot is engaged, the new 3D camera system identifies the fed-in components three-dimensionally and calculates the position and orientation of the next product to be picked up.
The closing station size parts are 3D-printed and can be interchanged quickly and easily to suit the shape of the cap being applied.
