The system was developed for Accrington-based SME The Cardboard Box Company, which designs, prints and manufactures bespoke corrugated packaging solutions for industrial, retail and promotional displays.
Says The Cardboard Box Company MD Ken Shackleton: “The AMRC came to visit us in Accrington to look at our operation and how they might improve upon any of our manufacturing processes. It was decided that exploring the possibility of installing some form of robotics at the end of one of our production lines would help with our palletisation process."
The company produce 22,000 cardboard boxes per hour on their machines, with operators loading and unloading cardboard bales which weigh between 15-20kg manually. IMG successfully developed a cost-effective automated system that uses a robotic arm palletising bundles of boxes. The prototype system was used to demonstrate to the firm how they would be able to halve the time operators spend manually handling the cardboard materials during production.
The bespoke packaging SME was able to access the expertise and capabilities at the AMRC due to a funding initiative run by the High Value Manufacturing Catapult, which match-funds the costs involved in conducting research and development projects for SMEs.
Explains IMG project manager Ben Fisher: “This kind of development is valuable for an SME such as The Cardboard Box Company, as it allows them to redeploy employees to production processes requiring higher skill levels and therefore a greater need of manual intervention, creating valuable efficiencies.
“Alongside this benefit, this kind of automated technology brings consistency and speed to the production process and has valuable applications in safeguarding the health and safety of employees; reducing the need for physically demanding manual operations.”
Adds Shackleton: “For the amount of expenditure incurred, the result was remarkable. We have subsequently received from the AMRC a number of companies to approach who can build a full industrial version of this robot with indicative costs which we are about to pursue.”
AMRC develops low-cost robotic manufacturing solution for packaging SME
1 min read
An autonomous robotic solution for improving process time and health and safety during the manufacture of cardboard boxes has been developed by the Integrated Manufacturing Group (IMG) of the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC).
