Jason Hogue
Southeast Sales Manager
BluePrint Automation (BPA)
What are the latest robotics innovations in the following areas?
pick & place
Recently delta style robots are able to move product in up to six axes.
Robot learning
Teaching robot positions by manually moving the robot to a desired location and hitting a “position teach” button is a handy new feature.
End-of-arm tooling (EOAT)
Adaptive gripper style tools like ones made by Soft Robotics have been taking off the last few years
Space-saving designs
A clever space saving design is incorporating electrical enclosures into the columns of the machine frame. This eliminates the need for remote enclosures, adds enclosure free space, and has a very sleek look. Enclosures are shown in blue.
What robotics equipment has your company recently introduced? Please describe its capabilities and benefits or improvements.
BluePrint Automation has recently introduced the Spider 300v. It uses delta robots to orient product and build patterns, and six axis robots to load containers. This system shelf ready display cases at high rates and can even run two simultaneous sku’s.
Highlight the new/updated features, with a secondary focus on how the systems can improve overall plant efficiency vs. keeping those tasks manual.
The low product count and single file presentation of shelf ready display cases require a large labor force to maintain minimum plant efficiency. The Spider 300v can run up to 50 display cases per minute, improving plant efficiency without the large labor burden.
How can a producer calculate their ROI?
Annual ROI = (Annual Labor Savings + Annual Material Savings) / (Initial Cost of Equipment + Annual Cost of Ownership) x 100%
How does the equipment help conserve energy expenditures?
The overall energy requirement of a robotic system is small when compared to the energy used by personnel ie.(rest room and break facilities, transportation, lighting, etc.)
What are some challenges in designing robotics for packaging operations in bakery/snack plants? What opportunities do you see in this market?
Variety packs have consistently been one of the top consumer snacking trends. Creating them poses several challenges such as managing WIP (work in progress) product and the large labor required to pack these manually. Automating this process has been a major focus in the last few years.
What robotics innovations do you foresee in the near future for packaging operations in the bakery/snack segment?
BPA has created a robotic solution (Spider 100v) to take product from WIP containers and create variety packs for up to 8 flavors.
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