Mobile Automation designed and built the first collaborative robot box erector deployed in Australia — carton erecting without the fencing, the footprint or the maintenance bill of a conventional machine, running beside the people on the line.
The gap conventional erectors leave
Conventional box erectors are more machine than many production lines actually need.
- Big, caged machines that take a large slice of the line footprint
- Maintenance-hungry machines, with a service bill to match
- Changeover between box sizes that can mean calling a service technician
- More capacity than a single packing line often requires
- The result is lines that still burn operator hours folding cartons by hand
What the cobot cell does instead
The cell was built around what a packing line actually asks of an erector.
- Erects every box size the line runs
- Repeatability held to 0.1 mm on every box size it erects
- A fraction of a conventional erector's footprint
- Changeover between box sizes without a service call
- Designed, built and integrated by our in-house robotics team
Running beside people, without fencing
The cell shares floor space with operators rather than being caged away from them.
- Runs without safety fencing around the cell
- Fenceless operation validated by risk assessment to AS/NZS 4024
- Sited alongside the people already working the packing line
- Footprint small enough to drop into an existing line layout
The results
- The first collaborative robot box erector deployed in the Australian market
- Staff hours spent folding cartons by hand taken off the line
- Repetitive-strain risk on carton folding reduced
- A low-maintenance cell that handles every box size the line runs
- Carton erecting made viable on a line that could not justify a conventional erector