Zecchetti has been cooperating for many years with glassmakers, providing them with more and more flexibility, both for cold-end conveying lines and downstream palletizing systems.
Zecchetti has been cooperating for many years with glassmakers, thus becoming more and more used to mastering their difficulties. Flexibility and Time Saving requirements have been dealt with both regarding cold-end conveying lines and downstream palletizing systems.
Glassworks need to be more and more flexible, from the “production type” point of view, and be able to manufacture the strangest items, very often in small batches, which, in turn, involves very frequent format changeover.
The Zecchetti MPH “Multi-Purpose” head is a unique palletizing head capable of handling almost all kinds of articles is consequently the ideal response to this need of “flexibility”. The head inserts a very thin plane underneath the layer, thus taking the place of the retracting table belt. The exchange between retracting table belt and inserting head plane, underneath the stationary layer, is carried out in perfect synchronism without any ‘jumps’.
Zecchetti has been installing the MPH “Multi-Purpose” head since 2009 and, says the company, feedback is excellent, also because the head has been studied in such a way to satisfy other requirements, thanks to the following features:
• a classical inflating tube head (or vacuum head) can be quickly fitted underneath the MPH head when palletizing into trays;
• a vacuum-cup pickup system for the interlayers can be a built-in facility when having to deal with space problems.
Thanks to these and other features, the MPH Multi-Purpose head is also ideal for palletizing cartons and shrink-wrapped packs.
The same “flexibility” need also regards the cold end conveying line that needs more and more to be preset for unexpected production and provided with facilities to speed up changeover procedures.
The format changeover on Zecchetti Cold End Lines is based on automatic speed adjustment by means of the setting of three basic absolute parameters and other correction parameters (in %).
Zecchetti’s equipment range covers all the necessary facility for bottle spacing, orientation, splitting.
An extremely precise Camera Orientation System (valid for all types of bottles, also for containers with very difficult shapes) guarantees great results thanks to its hi-tech features:
• modular multiple lighting system;
• images with perfect contrast;
• one or more video cameras adjustable in all directions;
• advanced software to single out the typical bottle characteristics for the corner survey.
Thanks to the combination of Camera Orientating System and the downstream Multi-Article Splitters, Zecchetti equipment can deal with the production of up to five different bottles simultaneously with important results.
As to quick format changeover, Zecchetti can propose an automatic system to adjust the conveyor side guides by taking into consideration the different needs of each conveyor section along the line.
The body guide automatic adjustment carried out by means of electric motors enables to automatically set the side guides (photo eyes, etc.) of the whole line or just of some particularly sensitive sections (such as the inspection machine in-feed or the palletizer in-feed, etc.).
The system may be combined with a handheld touch screen (called “MOBILE ZSA”) that enables the operator to find the ideal adjustment for each conveyor segment, fix it and save it in a final recipe. The handheld touch screen can also get a feedback from the other Zecchetti equipment in the line as well as from all the existing machines in that line.
The MOBILE ZSA (Zecchetti Supervisor Application) can be installed on Walk Pad, Smart Phone, Tablet.
The speed of each motor can also be adjusted (in percentage) in order to carry out the “fine tuning” required by the different line zones.
Zecchetti equipment is provided with “recipe” management which saves the parameters of each production.
In this way, all parameters relevant to a given bottle may be recalled any time in the future, thus considerably reducing the “format changeover” times.