Product category:
Pneumatic Actuators, Motors, Accessories
News Release from: Hoerbiger-Origa | Subject: OSP-P rodless cylinders
Edited by the Engineeringtalk Editorial
Team on 16 June 2005
Cylinders speed cigarettes to the
streets of Paris
Europe's largest tobacco products distribution centre has a new order preparation line, which is 80m long and has 60 unloading stations.
With more than 100 tonnes of cigarettes smoked in Paris every day, the city is served by Europe's largest tobacco products distribution centre Orders from wholesalers, shops, restaurants and kiosks are handled at breakneck speed, yet accuracy is never compromised
This article was originally published on Engineeringtalk on 6 Nov 2006 at 8.00am (UK)
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Pneumatic components by Hoerbiger-Origa have been used extensively on a new order preparation line, which is 80m long and has 60 unloading stations.
Engineers from Hoerbiger-Origa, integration specialists and the site engineers ensured that the control system for this is fully integrated with the site's IT system.
Individual customers can place their orders online and the central computer will within seconds generate a packing instruction and send it to the packing line.
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The handling system is controlled via ASI bus and sorts cigarette cartons of differing brands, depending on the order, into boxes and then onto pallets.
Between one and five cartons of each brand are "shot" onto a fast moving conveyor belt and then automatically put into packaging position and packed in accordance with customer specification or optimised by volume into boxes.
The complete loading time lasts only 0.3s per loading operation.
With fast response paramount and reliability taken for granted, the design and development team decided on an architecture using four independent but integrated packaging lines.
This allows a high throughput and gives virtually bombproof redundancy, should one of the lines go down temporarily.
The preparation cycle within each unloading stations starts with placing presorted cigarette cartons against a stop using two single-acting cylinders.
Then a loading head consisting of five 25mm bore Origa OSP-P rodless cylinders with a stroke of 340mm and a directly integrated valve pushes the packs onto the conveyor belt.
The downstream replenishment stop indexes a flap downwards to prevent reloading of the conveyor belt until the cigarette packs have been sorted again.
Using this system, a single operator can fulfil an order within a one-minute cycle time, whereas previously it took three people working for 3-5min.
This productivity gain is based on the key advantage of automatic replenishment, which Hoerbiger-Origa's system design engineers identified as critical for maintaining packing efficiency.
They used proximity sensors to control the filling level of the magazine and trigger the appropriate supplies.
A significant advantage that the engineers had not foreseen was the near total decline in pilfering by operators, as manual intervention is no longer possible.
The automatic process has also resulted in an improvement in packaging quality, an important aspect for delicate high quality tobacco products. Request a free brochure from Hoerbiger-Origa ...
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