Conveyor & Robotic Solution Transforms Beverage Can Production Facility
Ball Corporation is the world’s leading provider of innovative, sustainable aluminium packaging for beverage, personal care and household products. In line with their sustainability values and drive for efficiency, Ball Corporation had a dual requirement at the new 56,000sqm facility in Kettering, for a full pallet conveyor system with strapping and labelling integration for safe transportation and traceability of their palletised cans, alongside a fully automated process for handling waste aluminium once crushed into bales, ready for recycling.
As a long-term integrator for Ball Corporation now working on their fifth project, L-A-C Logistics Automation was tasked with the design and delivery of two bespoke integrated solutions that would enhance throughput, provide safe handling of pallets to both the warehouse and despatch areas, and eliminate the need for manual handling of the heavy bales of waste aluminium.
Design Challenges
With the palletised cans being transported to beverage plants across Europe, the production process uses various-sized pallets depending on the destination country. The solution needed to cater for the full range of pallet options and offer a smooth process to transport them safely and seamlessly from the production line palletisers to an outfeed adjacent to the warehouse. The palletised stacks of cans would pass through an integrated compression strapping machine to provide the necessary stability during transit, so it was important that L-A-C’s solution also ensured that the strap positioning would be in the correct order and consistent so that the pallets would be stable enough for transportation.
An inspection and labelling station was required for quality control before either storage or shipment of each pallet and would require a platform around the visual inspection area for operators to fully view the pallet in a safe environment and allow them to affix product and destination labels.
The waste aluminium bales provided an additional challenge due to their varying sizes and weight, around 30kg per bale. Furthermore, there were two types of cans to be processed; bright (clear) aluminium and decorated material which differed in weight, size and processing speeds, with an additional requirement for a rejection line to handle substandard bales.
Bespoke Dual-Purpose Solution
L-A-C had previously worked with Ball Corporation to integrate the waste bale handling system at other sites in both the UK and Europe and now had the opportunity to design an enhanced solution to suit the customer’s unique requirements at their new facility, alongside a new fully integrated pallet handling system.
For the pallet handling system, the pallets are fed from the production line palletisers onto L-A-C’s heavy-duty pallet chain conveyors with an integrated encoder and reader to determine what position the chain is in, enabling the stacked pallet of beverage cans to be accurately positioned on arrival at the strapping machine. The first two compression straps would be applied to each 2.8m high stack with a laser-etched barcode to be scanned at the inspection station. Here, the operators carry out quality control checks and create additional labels required for either warehouse storage or shipment. The pallets then travel along two chain conveyor line options depending on the requirement for a stretch-wrap application. The final phase of the conveyor system involves a roller conveyor used to stack two pallets together which are then moved to their required location by a forklift truck.
Robotic Bale Stacking Solution
Across the production facility at the waste aluminium handling area, L-A-C devised a fully automated solution involving an ABB Robotic Arm capable of measuring and stacking the bales onto a carrying pallet ready to be taken off-site for recycling. Offcuts and damaged aluminium from the production process are collated and crushed to form rectangular bales which need to measure a certain size to be picked up by the ABB robot and stacked onto a carrier pallet. As the bales arrive at the station, the robot measures each bale; if they measure correctly, the robot picks up the bale and places it on the pallet to create a fully stacked pallet of 28 bales in just one hour. The full pallet weighing up to 1000kg is transported via a heavy-duty chain conveyor to a strapping machine which applies 10 straps per stack to create a highly stable pallet, ready to be weighed and recorded at the check weighing station before despatch to the recycling facility.
Robust & Reliable Solutions
The design and integration of the L-A-C system fully supports the customer’s continuous quest for safety and efficiency. The two fully automated solutions optimise throughput rates, ensure safe pallet and product handling, improve traceability, and minimise the manual input required, resulting overall in enhanced operational efficiency and customer satisfaction.
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