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Article: Palletizing applications pile up for robots: robots, faster and cheaper than ever, can be competitive in many more palletizing applications than before.(Robotic Palletizing)
- Article from:
- Food & Drug Packaging
- Article date:
- September 1, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 BNP Media. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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When it comes to the end of the line, robots may be the end of the line.
Traditionally, robotic palletizing has been viewed as an intermediate step between strictly manual and fully automatic. For a robot to make sense at the end of the line, the application had to be low-volume and/or highly variable, with shifting pallet patterns that required great flexibility.
That's still true, of course. But reliability and other factors have improved in robotic palletizing systems to the point where, in some applications, they can compete directly as a alternative to fully automatic ram-based systems.
End users who are moving away from manual palletizing ...