Interpack 2023: Gerhard Schubert gears up for “new generation” of cobots
01 Mar 2023 --- At this year’s Interpack 2023 trade show in Düsseldorf, Germany, Gerhard Schubert will display a concept study for a new generation of machines combined with a new transport system.
Additionally, the company will highlight cobots for rapidly feeding different packaging components on a line, an extremely compact filling machine for cosmetic products and an entirely new resource-saving feeding system for carton blanks.
As the biggest packaging trade show in Europe, Interpack has been postponed since 2017 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The interim time will make Schubert’s “evolution immediately apparent,” it says.
These services include a new five-point “Packaging Perspectives” program, which includes bundled Schubert expertise, packaging development, testing facilities at the company’s technical center and laboratory, and customized consulting services to ensure the best mix of materials, packaging and machinery.
The company will be on display at the trade fair in Hall 14, Stand D01, from May 4-10.
Schubert’s compact filling process designed for cosmetics manufacturer Börlind.The tog.519 cobot
Schubert says its most “striking” products at the stand will be the new Schubert tog.519 cobots, now ready for series production, which are being presented for the first time.
On a new type of cosmetics filling machine, two of the cobots will be feeding various packaging components. A separate cobot will be processing bars, chip bags, or highly reflective pouches, demonstrating the advantages of AI.
With the tog.519, Schubert is extending packaging process automation beyond the packaging line itself, the company claims. The mobile, free-standing or optionally housed robots can pick up unsorted lightweight products via pick & place and process them at up to 90 cycles per minute.
AI-supported programming and image processing are conceived so that customers can change formats without prior programming knowledge.
“Basically, the new product simply needs to be passed through the cobot’s vision system. Flexible work locations, a wide variety of pick and place tasks, high process speed and very simple operation, are the advantages cobots offer to manufacturers in a wide range of industries,” says Schubert.
A cosmetics line for Börlind
Schubert will also demonstrate how compact a filling process can be with a recently developed line for cosmetics manufacturer Börlind. On a compact 2 x 4 meter space, liquid cosmetics are filled into glass bottles with screw pumps or glass jars with screw caps – then closed, weighed, sealed and checked.
Two Schubert cobots automatically and gently feed the individual packaging components to the machine via pick and place. Using a recently developed transport system that complies with the Hygienic Design Standard and is suitable for applications involving liquids such as perfume, the packaging materials are transferred to two alternating filling stations in an “exceptionally space-saving way.”
The Schubert image processing system ensures quality controls, including checking breakage at the edges of the glass jars. Quick set-up times for the various formats and 3D-printed format parts guarantee even more flexibility.
The modular machine concept “is ideal” for adding further process steps directly to the filling line. For example, labeling and end-of-line packaging can be integrated to map the entire packaging process seamlessly and automatically in a single line.
Visitors and exhibitors can visit PackagingInsights’ booth at Interpack 2023 in B83/ Hall 8A.
Edited by Louis Gore-Langton
