Palletizer Packaging Solutions

Palletizer automation is an excellent way to increase packaging throughput and reduce labor. The equipment is used to stack loads of boxed or unboxed manufactured goods on wooden, plastic, or corrugated products and ready them for shipment. In addition to promoting operational efficiency, this type of automation reduces or eliminates the heavy lifting and awkward movement that causes injuries to packaging line operators. Automation options run the gamut from inexpensive, semi automatic alternatives to full blown robotics systems that operate on large scale and are suitable for high speed, high volume, three shift operations. Automating palletizaton can be a complex project, since there are a great number of operational factors to be considered. With years of experience, Heritage Pioneer is well positioned to assist or take the lead in identifying the correct packaging solution for a plant’s unique needs. Technology has made the selection process easier than in the past, however, since detailed specifications as well as video of machines in operation are readily available online.

Industries and Applications

High speed, fully automatic equipment works extremely well when shipping containers and products are of uniform size, and when long production runs of a single size occur. In the manufacturing sector, a palletizer is often employed in processed food, chemical, beverage, pharmaceutical, and home care products operations. The equipment is used not only to consolidate loads of corrugated boxes, but loads comprised of drums, kegs, bags, trays, pails, and many other types of shipping containers. Automation can be adapted to handle over sized and undersized products, as well as over sized and undersized loads. In the distribution and order fulfillment sectors, use of a palletizer is not as widespread, since many such operations handle loads of greatly varying size and/or predominantly ship via parcel carriers. Nevertheless, when package size is consistent, the high volume of these operations easily justifies automation.

Types of Palletizer Equipment

In a sense, a simple hand truck or forklift truck is a type of palletizing machine. Generally, this equipment is popularly thought of as a machine with an arm that pivots or swivels, removing shipping units from a conveyor line and placing them on a pallet in a predetermined configuration. This variety of machinery is referred to as robotics, and is one style of automation. A second style is high level equipment, where a unit is placed in a conveyor line, sorts product, and drops tiers of product into place on a pallet that is then lowered to floor level. Finally, floor level equipment builds the pallet tier by tier on the floor. Selection depends a great deal on the configuration of the existing packaging line, but scalability of this automation is crucial, so thought should be given to future as well as current needs. Link back to the top of this Palletizer page.

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