Robotic palletizer – types and benefits

Efficiently transporting products to and from your manufacturing process can have a significant impact on the profitability of your business. In order to be highly efficient, the process must be fast, safe for the product, and user-friendly. Moreover, in the process of transport with robotic palletizer, we must not encounter bottlenecks and other inconveniences that could affect the speed of transport or damage the products we transport.

A robotic palletizer helps you automate the process of stacking products onto pallets. One of the great advantages of the robotic palletizer is the fact that it can be used both for palletizing and depalletizing products.

Today, it is widely known that a robotic palletizer can solve many challenges that previously widely used conventional palletizers could not.

Palletizing robot vs. conventional palletizer

Conventional palletizers have accompanied us for more than half a century and in the packaging industry, they still occupy an important place in the packaging of various products. Nevertheless, more and more times, we can offer better quality and more efficient solutions using a robotic palletizer, which is not only more efficient and more flexible but also more precise.

As with their conventional cousins, robotic palletizers often use an infeed conveyor. However, they don’t orient items by bumping or sliding them on the conveyor. Instead, individual products are arranged by a robot. A robot for palletizing can do this by turning or lifting the product to a specific position on the pallet.

As with other matters, both the conventional palletizer and the robot palletizer can boast advantages and disadvantages. Thus, for example, it will be difficult to overcome the operational speed of a conventional palletizer, which can also work with up to 200 cases/minute.

Robotic palletizers, on the other hand, excel at manipulating the product – turning boxes for display purposes with labels out, or stacking pails and bags. Because they’re often tasked with performing slower functions such as rotating products, their throughput is more variable than conventional palletizers.

Types of robotic palletizers

There are several different types of robots for palletizing that we use to find solution for a particular challenge.

Pedestal robot

This is actually a pedestal arm-like machine mounted on a pedestal. Robotic palletizer usually has 4 axes, but also 5 or 6 can be installed, if necessary. The number of axes determines where and how the robot will be able to move. Their capacities range from a few pounds to over a ton. A single unit can be programmed to palletize multiple lines or, in high-speed operations, multiple units may palletize a single line.

The operation of these palletizing robots is relatively simple. The pallets are stacked in a designated area. They can get there by hand, or they can be brought there by a transport line. A robot with a gripper, which is selected according to the product to be packed, picks the product up and moves it to the pallet.

Gantry style palletizing robot application

A gantry is a framed structure with side supports and an overhead span; a robotic palletizer that hangs from a gantry is called a gantry-style palletizer.

Such robotic palletizers are most often used when packaging heavy products. As a result, the robot works at a lower speed. The robot can take care of the transfer of individual products, as well as stacking products in layers or rows.

Layer forming style

Layer forming robotic palletizer often involves a series of robots, each with its own task.

One pedestal-style robot positioned along a conveyor will make up a straightforward setup. The product will be moved and positioned by the palletizing robot on the conveyor so that, when it reaches the end stop, it is already set up correctly for its layer. The end stop is