Schubert set to demonstrate compact packaging lines and robotics advances at Fachpack
Germany’s Schubert is due to make a return to this year’s Fachpack event, aiming to prove a point that packaging machines don’t in fact have to take up enormous areas of a manufacturing operation, writes Neill Barton.
The event, takin place between 23-25 September at the Nuremberg Exhibition Centre, has become an established fixture on the events calendar for its diverse array of sector equipment on show, including lines targeting the confectionery market.
As the company explained, the business will use this year’s event to- demonstrate that compact solutions are possible with a cartoner from its ‘lightline’ series and a new, versatile high-performance erection unit.
Notably, as part of this, its agile tog.519 cobot, which will be picking biscuits at remarkable speed at a partner company’s stand, will also be on display at the trade fair, and was among entrants for our World Confectionery Awards, with winners set to be unveiled at this year’s World Confectionery Conference event in Brussels on 11 September.
With its lightline series, Schubert is targeting manufacturers who have standardised packaging tasks and need to be ready for production quickly. The lightline range includes cartoners, case packers, picker lines and flow-wrapping machines – all made from preconfigured modules. They enable quick planning and assembly times at extremely attractive investment costs.
The lightline cartoner exhibited at Fachpack – to be seen as a bar packer at the stand – goes a long way towards achieving the targeted efficiency: thanks to a single-lane A3 erector with a vertical magazine, the machine saves a significant amount of space without ever compromising on performance.
Up to 4,000 blanks fit into the cartoner’s recently developed vertical magazine, enabling the system to run continuously for 60 minutes. Schubert will also be presenting the single-lane A3 erector for the first time as a stand-alone machine unit in the form of the tog.101: “The 100% standardised tog.101 box erector guarantees high performance of up to 60 boxes per minute in a wide range of packaging lines,” says Ralf Schubert, explaining the stand-alone approach.
The tog.101 stands out not only due to its compact design and high performance, but also thanks to its ease of operation.
Setting up box formats takes just a few minutes and is done simply by entering parameters such as box dimensions and glue points. A glue applicator developed with Robatech also enables glue-saving erection: the tog.101 control system adjusts the erector speed and the amount of glue applied so that just enough glue is applied to securely bond the box. This approach requires less hot melt adhesive than is customary in the industry.
The tog.519 cobot at Barsch
Quick and easy is also the name of the game at stand 125 in Hall 1. Barsch GmbH has made a name for itself since 1986 as a specialist in modular flow-wrapping machines.
The systems call for quick and efficient product feeding, so what could be more obvious than entrusting the task to a robot that sets standards in the field? This is why the tog.519 cobot from Schubert will be doing its picking at the Barsch stand, just a few steps away.
Under the motto “Barsch meets Schubert”, the Reiskirchen-based company will be presenting a flexible line solution for loose biscuits. The tog.519 cobot uses an AI-supported camera system to detect products that have been poured or arranged on trays and places them precisely into Barsch’s flow-wrapping machine’s feed chain. This machine packs the biscuits into as many as 60 paper flowpacks per minute.
The set-up is specially designed for frequent product changes: products can be changed within a few minutes – simply by loading a data set and changing the film and format set. Schubert can be found at Fachpack at Hall 1, Stand 244 at the Nuremberg Exhibition Centre.
