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Hellenic Sugar Industry
Hellenic Sugar Industry SA is the sole sugar producer in
Greece. The main activity of the company is the production
and trade of sugar, as well as the trade of its by-products.
The company produces white crystal sugar whereas in
the course of production a set of by-products is also being
produced which following a proper processing are made
available in the market.
The Hellenic Sugar Industry required a palletizing and
wrapping system for their packaging facility at Larisa to
handle packaged bundles of sugar bags. Kinematik won
the contract by offering a complete end-of-line solution with
a minimized footprint, including a compact layer palletizer
and a stretch wrapping machine with top sheet.
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The Solution
• Compact Layer Palletizer (11 packages/min)
• Automatic pallet dispenser (15 pallets magazine)
• Turntable Stretch Wrapper with Top Sheet having 2
infeeds (18 pallets/hour)
• Infeed package roller conveyor line with rotating
mechanism
• Outfeed pallet roller conveyor line
• Safety Equipment
• Engineering, Automation and Integration
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Operation Description
The packages enter the palletizing system through an
infeed conveyor, which can either accumulate if necessary
or directly forward the packages to the palletizer. The
packages are then rotated if needed at the rotation
conveyor and forwarded in the row building area of each
layer. Row-by-row the builded layer is then pressed and
released on the pallet using a stripping plate. Empty pallets
are fed to the palletizer using a pallet dispenser capable of
storing up to 15 pallets.
The completed pallet is then wrapped at a turntable stretch
wrapping machine with topsheet. The wrapped pallet
exits the palletizing line using an outfeed roller conveyor,
capable of buffering up to four wrapped pallets.
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Product Quality
Throughout the process the packages are handled gently,
maximizing the final product packaging quality. Pressing
each layer forms aligned stacks and with layer interlocking
guarantees stability during transportation.
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Compact and Flexible
The system has a small footprint, requiring less space.
Moreover, it has an increased flexibility, consisting of easily
assembled submodules. Future expansion is possible
by adding a second palletizer and sharing the wrapping
machine.
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Intelligent
The infeed conveyor controls automatically the supply
of packages choosing whether to accumlate or directly
forwarding them. Moreover, there is a sleep function in
case of being empty. Special care is taken to minimize
the wear of the treated packages at the infeed conveyor
and at the palletizer. The pallet dispenser offers an antiblock
mechanism, so that if a pallet is blocked the system
is aware of it, protecting the equipment and reducing
downtime.
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Simple Use
The system, except the wrapping
machine operated by its own
touch panel, is controlled through
a touch panel. Both signal alarms
and warnings, allowing instant
troubleshooting.
The palletizer can be programmed
to build various types of layer
patterns. The layer patterns are interlocked one with the
other, so that the pallet load is stabilized.
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Safety
The safety equipment consists of emergency buttons,
safety fences with doors, safety light barriers at pallet entry
and exit locations.
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Features
Smooth motion and gentle
handling is achieved, by
using frequency inverters
to all the gearmotors, by
fully guiding with linear
guides all the palletizer’s
motions and by employing
encoders to position the
lifting and pushing mechanisms. Each layer is pressed
from four sides, with regulated pressure, achiving the best
possible layer form.
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Minimum Maintenance and Reliability
The system was designed especially to require the
minimum maintenance consisting of top quality materials
and equipment. Based on the easy to assemble and
troubleshoot philosophy, all the electrical connections are
pluggable.
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