PALLETIZING

Once products are packed into the shipper case, trays or shrink wrapped, they must be palletized for shipment and distribution. Large format flexible packaging such as bulk bags are also palletized for shipment. There are three basic technologies used to accomplish this.

SHUTTLEPLATE

This is the most traditional method of palletizing. Cases, trays or shrink-wrapped master packs are conveyed to the infeed of the palletizer in single file. A series of pushers, both dynamic and static transfer these onto a large horizontal metal plate to create a layer pattern. Once a full layer has been formed, a pneumatic or mechanical sweep bar transfers the entire layer onto a pallet. Subsequent layers are formed and indexed vertically to build the layers of the pallet.

ROBOTIC

The advent of robots in the modern manufacturing environment has seen them used in many areas of production. One of the most common is for palletization. Similar in infeed configuration to the shuttleplate technology, the cases are collated in a staging area where a robot with an end of arm tooling takes either a single or multiple cases and transfers them to the pallet. The end of arm tool uses either pneumatic, vacuum or mechanical design, or a combination of these to retrieve the cases from the staging area. Pattern building is generally a combination of axial movements of the robot in conjunction with the case pre-staging function. The introduction of corrugate or plastic layer sheets is also manipulated by the robot to insure load stability.

GANTRY

Gantry style palletization utilizes an overhead metal arch where a three axis device interfaces with the same product infeed design of the shuttleplate and robotic technologies to transfer cases onto a pallet.