Innovative motorised gripper assembly

This new unit, which can be retrofitted onto existing robot palletisers was introduced at the recent Interpack exhibition and has been well received by customers across Europe. As a result of being displayed at the exhibition several orders have been secured in various industries.

The gripper was originally developed to palletise valve bags and accurately positions the filled bags, close up next to each other in the layer for a good interlocking pattern. If required the gripper can also be programmed with a limited compression of the lower bag, which results in the formation of square sided loaded pallets.

Building on the success of this valve bag gripper a second version was developed for open mouth bags; particularly those that contain fluidised products. This gripper allows the filled bags to be overlapped to give the optimum interlocking layer pattern to produce a stable loaded pallet. This innovative gripper does not pick and move the bags in the conventional way from the side, but from the bottom of the bag, supporting the bag lengthwise. With the combined action of a special pivoting chute in the pick up area and the motorised gripper, it is possible to overlap a bag by up to 30% of its length.