HOW COBOTS CAN BE USED IN CONFECTIONERY PRODUCTION
In the dynamic world of food and confectionery manufacturing, efficiency, flexibility, and adaptability are critical to maintaining a competitive edge. In this article, Andrew Mason, Automation Sales Manager at RARUK Automation, explores real-world applications of collaborative robots (cobots) in the food industry, demonstrating their capability to handle diverse tasks—from packing and labelling products to decorating baked goods with precision. Discover how these innovative technologies are taking the strain out of repetitive tasks in the food and confectionery sector.
Comments from Andrew Mason, Automation Sales Manager at RARUK Automation:
Universal Robots cobots are most popular in the food/ confectionery industry for end-of-line tasks like product packing and palletising in low-care areas. For instance, a customer of ours is using the AX10 Robotiq Palletising Solution, which is designed for the UR10 robot, to palletise boxes of bread. In this process, the bread is hand-packed into boxes and pushed onto a conveyor. The boxes pass through a case sealer and are then picked and placed onto pallets by the cobot solution.
The main reasons that we find customers choose the Universal Robots range is due to their ease of use; the intuitive software allows greater flexibility and quick changeovers to fit business needs. A cobot can even be fitted with a Smartshift Tool Changer, which allows the robot to switch from one end-effector to another. In the past, we have had a palletising application where different grippers were required for different product lines. We fitted the robot with a Tool Changer so that it could easily and seamlessly switch between grippers, depending on which product line it was palletising.
A single robot can also be used to palletise two different product lines at once. This can be done by either feeding the robot with boxes from two different conveyors or by fitting the robot with a vision system which allows it to detect and separate boxes of different product types. This allows the solution to be tailored to suit different throughput needs.
Collaborative robots are also commonly used at the product packing and labelling stage, which would take place before palletising. The robots can automate the picking and placing of packaged products into boxes.
Another application we have seen before is a bakery using a Universal Robots UR5e cobot to decorate biscuits. The robot is fitted with a Robotiq wrist camera, which detects and orientates each biscuit to be decorated. Then, the robot applies icing to the biscuits using an AIM Robotics Fluid Dispenser.
