Precise Pick-and-Place of Chocolate Pralines

Initial Situation & Goals

The Delica AG is part of Migros Industry and produces, among other things, FREY chocolate products. At the production site in Buchs, there was an aging packaging system.

With the help of eleven robots, pralines were packed into different blisters. Now, the existing Scara robot cells were to be replaced by a new system with a higher cycle rate of up to 70 pralines per minute.

A challenge was that both the praline feeder belt and the main belt for blister transport move continuously. The pralines must be dynamically positioned from the belt and into the blister while in full motion. Another requirement was the integration of the new robots into the existing system.

The Solution

Latest robot and Vision Technology as well as control with line tracking enable smooth and very fast cycles.

We chose the Stäubli TS2-80 Scara Robot Cell with dual line tracking and a Cognex vision system. Both the blister transport belt and the praline feeder belt received an encoder.

This way, the positions of blisters and pralines can be precisely tracked, while the high-resolution Cognex camera is able to quickly and accurately recognize the position of the pralines. All systems are networked with high-speed Ethernet to achieve the required cycle rate effectively.

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