TOTAL Exhibition, Birmingham NEC, 15-18th May 2007
Hall 5 Stand 5221

Look at any automated production line in the food and pharmaceutical industries and you're likely to find one operation that is still carried out manually: case packing. The Casepacker from Quin Systems is a new machine that is finally bringing affordable automation to the case packing process.

The Quin Casepacker can readily achieve 100 cycles per minute, putting it far ahead of conventional solutions, and can pay for itself within 12 months. It's not too difficult to develop a rudimentary case packer that works at around 20 cycles per minute, but this is far too slow for modern production lines. Case packers that can reach 50 cycles per minute are few and far between, and they are costly. Case packers for higher speeds are almost unknown.

Quin Systems is a company with wide experience of developing innovative motion control solutions, and after looking at the current market, decided to approach the problem of automated case packing from a new angle.

A lot of conventional 'robots' are not well suited to case packing applications- they were mainly developed in the automotive industry. Other 'robots' such as the 'spider-like suspension systems', are capable of high speed, but are very limited in payload and their geometry prevents them from reaching into deep cases.

Therefore any automatic case packing system needs to meet the demands of modern production machines, be compact and flexible, with the ability to handle products from many different orientations. The solution must be economically viable.

The result is the Casepacker that features R-Theta™ technology. This concept minimises inertia, allowing high operating speeds to be achieved, and in conjunction with Quin's specially developed motion control algorithms, it ensures that all movements are smooth, thereby eliminating the risk of product damage, even when working at high speeds. The design is compact and easily scalable, allowing the stroke lengths for the motions to be selected to match the exact requirements of individual applications.

The system is supplied pre-programmed, and simply requires the user to enter details of the required movements via an intuitive touch-screen interface. Programs for multiple products are easily created and stored.

The Quin Casepacker has been running at Northern Foods in Uttoxeter over the last 12 months, where biscuits are produced at a rate of over 100 packets per minute. According to System Engineer Dave Bill: "Its reliability has proved to be excellent. By eliminating the need for manual case packing, it has cut our costs substantially, and will have a very short pay-back period, especially when its low initial cost is taken into account". Quin have also installed the Casepacker with Synergy Healthcare and at Heinz Frozen & Chilled Foods. The latter had looked at automatic case packing in the past, but their lack of space precluded conventional systems. Both are happy, and more lines are planned.

The Quin Casepacker offers the first truly viable automated case packing solution for the food and pharmaceutical industries. Without doubt, the days of manual case packing are numbered!

Quin Systems have recently joined forces with Endoline Machinery to provide a complete case packing solution that outperforms any other currently available, in terms of both speed and versatility. "We're very excited about this new arrangement", says Tony Hacker, Endoline's Managing Director. "It means we can widen our offer to customers and provide them with complete solutions to meet their high-speed case packing needs.""

More information: Casepacker | Endoline | TOTAL 2007