Bar chairs are commonly used in construction to support reo bars (reinforcing bars) in concrete slabs. They are injection-moulded parts commonly imported from overseas.
Faced with dramatic increases in shipping costs, a leading supplier of building products decided to build a green field production facility in Sydney to manufacture these bar chairs. They invested in two 400T Injection Moulding Machines and went on a search for an automation solution in order to make production economically viable.
Some of the challenging requirements of this system are:
- 12 different products needed to be collated and stacked into each other
- Up to 16 cavities tools
- Production rate up to 5000 products/hr
- Stacks of products are bagged
- Bags are labelled and palletised
- Some stacks are strapped and palletised
- Pallets are strapped and stretch-wrapped
Apex Automation and Robotics was awarded the contract to supply the complete automated production line, whereby the only interaction with an operator is for the forklift to load stacks of empty pallets at the beginning of the line, and pick up complete pallets at the end of the line. Our end-to-end automation solution includes:
- A pallet dispenser
- Product collation modules
- 2 robots
- 2 baggers
- 2 Label Printers / Applicator
- Automatic product strapper
- Automatic pallet strapper
- Automatic stretch-wrapper
The pallet dispenser feeds pallets onto conveyors to two robotic cells. Each cell has a 6-axis robot, collating module, a bagger, label Printer / Applicator and a strapper. A 2-axis robot picks the products from Injection Moulding Machine and stacks them on the collating module, and the 6-axis robot picks up these stacks and loads them into the bagger then palletises the bags. For the strapped products, the 6-axis robot loads each stack in the strapping machine then palletises the strapped stacks.
The complete pallets are transferred to an automatic strapping machine, then to an automatic wrapping machine before they accumulate on chain conveyors, ready to be unloaded by the forklift. The system included enough accumulation to keep up with unattended night shift operation.
One feature of our automation solution was the end-of-arm tool of the 6-axis robot that is capable to handle all products and bags without mechanical adjustments.
The system is controlled by a PLC with integrated safety, interfacing with the moulding machines, robot controllers, baggers, label printers, strapping machines and wrapping machine via an Ethernet/IP network.
Following commissioning and handover, Apex Automation and Robotics has been proud to see our turnkey automation solution has enabling the client to operate their facility 24/7, including autonomous lights-out production overnight, with virtually no labour cost.
