Acorn Meadow Designs
445 Grange Road North Smithfield, RI 02896
Toll Free: 866-765-3833
Tel: 401-765-3833 (Fax 401-633-6142)
PROJECT SUMMARY
Versatile Pick and Place Bandage Packer
GOAL:
A UK contract manufacturer of medical bandages needed to reduce labor costs of counting and packing cartons of bandages. Several different sizes of bandages and carton capacities had to be handled.
STARTING POINT:
A factory engineer had several ideas for
automating the
process and had been to the plant to review operations with management and
operators. Her wanted to proceed with simple proof of concept prototyping
to minimize initial investment.
SCOPE OF WORK:
A concept for handling bandages as they were presented by a conveyor was developed with the company engineer. Simple desk top tests with hand actuated pushers and simple guides suggested likelihood of success. A simple automated jig was built to test the most problematic operation of popping bandages up into a magazine or stack. The remainder of the machine was only conceptualized until the “popper” was proven. The popper was built and tested and found not sufficiently reliable to justify further development.
Another approach was identified that would use less size specific tooling and be more tolerant of skewed and out of specification items. Again a very simple mock-up was built to test a pneumatic vacuum gripper for picking and inserting bandages and was tested with the company engineer.
This successful mock up lead to Acorn Meadow Designs engineering and construction of a complete packing station that picked packages off of a simple band conveyor and placed a predetermined number into an open carton. An operator was then signaled to replace the carton and re-initialize operation. Picking rate was adequate for three stations to handle current production. Off spec. or excess production would pass by the stations to a simple accumulation bin. All machine motion was pneumatic and it was controlled by a mini-PLC programmed in-house.
