Comau has collaborated with Siscodata for the development of an innovative robotic cell designed to clean and manipulate high-end, pre-printed cosmetic bottles without leaving a single scratch.
With the aim of increasing the production capacity for Cosmint, a premium cosmetic manufacturer who works with some of the world’s biggest names in the industry, the System Integrator used two Comau NJ-40 robots within a high-speed depalletizing solution able to pick, rotate and clean custom-printed plastic bottles at an accelerated rate of 150 pieces per minute.
The new cell replaces three standard machines that were previously installed at the Cosmint facilities.
Challenged to design a complex solution in only four and a half months from start to finish, Siscodata, with whom both Comau and Cosmint have a long-standing relationship, successfully delivered the jointly engineered system despite the aggressive timeframe.
The fully integrated system protects the aesthetic quality and purity of the final product, achieves the desired production rate of .45 seconds per bottle and ensures mechanical, electronic and electrical efficiency.
It also enables Cosmint to trust that the end-customer receives a product that is free from contamination and 100 percent compliant to their rigorous quality standards.
The automated depalletizing solution features two Comau NJ-40 6-axis articulated robots that guarantee the speed, precision and repeatability the application requires.
With the help of special grippers and a high-resolution 2D camera, each robot picks a series of bottles from the fragile, honeycombed carton containers used for shipping.
Working in tandem at very fast speeds, the robots rotate the bottles before moving them to a cleaning station to remove over 99 percent of residual particles or contaminants left over from the production, shipping and depalletizing processes.
This part of the solution is quite complex and requires synchronized “on the fly” movements by the medium-payload robots to handle a production rate of more than 9,000 bottles an hour.
Fabio Franceschi, Comau sales country manager for general industry – Italy, says: “The collaboration with Siscodata to create an advanced depalletizing solution for the cosmetics industry confirms Comau’s commitment to the development of new technologies capable of solving complex production processes, in any industrial sector.
“This goes hand-in-hand with our aim of helping Cosmint improve their productivity while reducing capital expenditure.”
Francesca Grieco, engineering manager at Cosmint, says: “We are particularly satisfied with the Comau robots, which have allowed us to reach our target of creating a system that is 100 percent reliable from a performance, quality and electro-mechanical standpoint, and will guarantee the exceptionally high cleanliness standards specified by our end customer.”
Roberto Brambilla, CEO of Siscodata Computer confirms: “We chose Comau for this project because we have been working together for close to 23 years and have successfully completed projects around the world, including Israel, Sweden, Turkey, Egypt and both the United Kingdom and the USA.”
The innovative solution is fully adaptable to different industries and payloads.
