Chocolate Candy – High Speed Robotic Tray Loading Machine
- Machine Number: 6651
- Controls: The system is controlled by the robot controllers running software created in PackXpert. Operator interface is provided by Microsoft Windows application
- Cycle Rate: 100 cluster per minute per robot. Final output is 200 clusters per minute
Chocolate clusters are automatically transferred from the manufacturing conveyor and placed into finished trays, used for final packaging. Two, high speed transfer robots are used to pick up chocolate clusters and transfer them into trays that come in a variety of 3, 6, and 9 nest arrays.
Vision cameras are used to locate each cluster and transfer the location to the robot software. The conveyor transferring the clusters is coupled to an encoder to keep track of the locations as they move down to the robot locations.
Trays are pulled from a stack and placed onto separate conveyors and are also vision located as they come into the loading locations on each side of the main production conveyor. The filled trays then exit the machine and transfer to a final packaging location.