Your warehouse and shipping operation is responsible for making sure products stay safe as they move through the supply chain. To avoid damaged products or accidents during transport, you need reliable and consistent palletizing methods. That’s why many facilities turn to automatic palletizing equipment to keep products secure and stable throughout the supply chain.
When it’s time to implement an automatic palletizing process, you must choose between two main types of palletizers: conventional palletizers and robotic palletizers. To find the right palletizing solution for your facility, you must examine factors such as the type of products you work with, the capacity requirements you must meet, the space you have in your facility, and more. Find the best solution for your facility with this guide on how to know if conventional palletizing is right for you.
Conventional vs. Robotic Palletizing
There are benefits and drawbacks to both conventional and robotic palletizing. Before you can decide which solution will best serve your facility, you must understand the ins and outs of both types of palletizers.
Conventional palletizers are an excellent solution to properly stack your loads. With conventional palletizers, employees feed products into the machine via a conveyor. The palletizer then rotates and aligns products into the correct pallet orientation. The palletizer machine builds pallets layer by layer with ultimate precision and consistency. Once the pallet is complete, it exits the machine, and the process starts again with a new pallet.
Robotic palletizers, on the other hand, use a robot to align and stack products into a stable pallet. This robotic element can take various forms, including a gantry robot or robotic arm. The robot also contains an end-of-arm tool, such as a gripper, to grab, move, and interact with products. Robotic palletizers are also able to work with multiple infeed conveyors, allowing them to construct multiple pallets of various products at one time.
Components of a Conventional Palletizer
While the basics of a conventional palletizer stay consistent no matter what model you choose for your facility, there are some additional components and features to make the machine even more beneficial. Components like pallet dispensers, case turners, elevators, or tie dispensers allow your conventional palletizer to create more effective and consistent product loads.
Another important feature to consider is concurrent stretch wrapping. Conventional palletizers that come with concurrent wrapping consolidate the processes of stacking and wrapping your pallets. The conventional palletizer wraps each layer of the pallet as it’s built, creating a load that is stable and secure every step of the way.
The Benefits of Conventional Palletizing
Like all secondary packaging equipment, conventional palletizers are specialized to suit certain tasks and environments. Part of deciding whether conventional palletizing is right for you is understanding the benefits of a conventional palletizer and learning where those advantages are most effective.
Superior Speed
Conventional palletizers are powerful, efficient solutions that deliver quality pallets at excellent speeds. Though conventional palletizers only build one pallet at a time, they do so with remarkable speed and consistency.
Conventional palletizers also offer more flexibility in terms of different types of product packaging or stacking patterns. Furthermore, processes such as concurrent stretch wrapping speed up the palletizing process.
Consolidated steps, precise product placement, and reliable machinery work together to deliver a high-speed palletizing solution. This superior speed makes conventional palletizers an ideal solution for high-volume facilities that face larger throughput requirements.
Reliability for Less Downtime
When one piece of machinery doesn’t work, your entire packaging line suffers. Don’t choose a palletizing solution that will hold you back with frequent downtime and repairs. Instead, you need a reliable palletizer machine that requires less preventative maintenance and minimizes downtime in your workflow.
Conventional palletizers are a dependable solution to keep your packaging line up and running. Compared to robotic palletizers, conventional palletizer machines need less preventative maintenance to keep running at their best. Similarly, robotic palletizers are more likely to have issues that require repairs and disrupt your packaging line.
When you can rely on your palletizer machine to keep running, you don’t have to worry about slowing down your workflow or not meeting requirements due to repairs or maintenance. Less downtime means more consistency in your workflow, fewer frustrated employees, and higher productivity overall.
Consolidated Steps Save Floor Space
When a conventional palletizer handles the processes of stacking, wrapping, and palletizing products, you save space. Instead of dedicating multiple parts of your facility floor to stacking pallets, stretch wrapping product loads, and other palletizing stages, you can consolidate those steps into a single location.
As such, conventional palletizers often come with a smaller footprint on your facility floor. In addition to saving valuable floor space, a smaller footprint gives you more flexibility when installing the conventional palletizer in your facility.
Better Safety, Fewer Injuries
Conventional palletizers contain many features to make operations safer for your employees. A controlled entrance helps contain all palletizer mechanisms within a safety enclosure, eliminating the risk of injuries or other accidents among the actual palletizing equipment. The controlled entrance ensures that operators are safe while the palletizer runs.
It’s also important to note that conventional palletizers reduce the risk of repetitive motion injuries, muscle strain, and other ergonomic injuries among workers. By relying on automation, facilities don’t have to put employees through the physically strenuous and tedious task of manually stacking and wrapping pallets.
Consistency and Stability
One of the greatest benefits of conventional palletizers is the consistency they deliver to your packaging line. Precise product placement, stable concurrent stretch wrapping, and flexible layout and control allow conventional palletizers to create a perfect pallet every time. With better consistency and stability, you can ensure your products move safely and reliably through your supply chain and to your customers.
Is a Conventional Palletizer Right for Your Facility?
If you need a consistent, high-capacity solution for your packaging line, a conventional palletizer might be right for you. Generally speaking, conventional palletizers work best at mid- to high-speed capacities with lower product variety. However, features like concurrent stretch wrapping and intuitive programming software can increase flexibility and make your conventional palletizer even more effective.
If you’re looking for a better palletizing solution for your secondary packaging facility, let the experts at Robopac USA help. Contact our team today to learn more about how our palletizer machines can bring your packaging line to greater heights.
