Food

Recipe for success for the future

The F4 picker arms take the ravioli from the infeed belt and place them into the trays.

Three F4 robots, equipped with suction cups, pick the ravioli up from the conveyor and position them accurately in the trays.

An F4 picker arm in action, placing the ravioli accurately into the trays.

Specially manufactured robot tools are a guarantee for gentle product handling.

The F4 picker arms carefully suck the fragile ravioli.

A total of nine F4 picker arms sort the ravioli accurately into the trays.

Raviolini is the name of this tasty 7x8 cm giant from the Surgital product range. Nine pieces are placed into each tray. The maximum output of the picker line is 42 trays per minute.

Pictured is an approx. 7 x 8 cm ravioloni from the Surgital range.

Requirements

Carefully packaging up to 720 pieces of ravioli per minute

The quality and flexibility of the pick and place machine win the customer over once again

A single Schubert pick and place machine packs up to 720 pieces of frozen ravioli per minute at Surgital.

For its new ravioli products, the Italian frozen pasta producer Surgital has once again opted for a Schubert packaging solution. The new pick and place machine packs a total of nine types of ravioli into trays, efficiently and flexibly. Schubert systems have been in operation at Surgital since 2005 with a high rate of success: this positive experience made it an easy choice to use a solution by the Baden-Württemberg-based packaging line manufacturer again.

Solution

How does the solution meet the requirement?

Three winners: a space-saving system, careful product handling and efficient loading

The Schubert pick and place machine ensures that the ravioli pieces are handled sensitively on the one hand and that the trays are correctly sorted and loaded on the other. To ensure that only undamaged products make it into the trays, an image processing system is in use: an incident light scanner identifies the position and condition of the products and passes the information on to the F4 picker arms. As an additional feature the line has an extremely space-saving design, allowing space for three F4 robot arms per sub-machine. The pick and place machine, which consists of four sub-machines, therefore has a total of nine F4 robots. Another plus point is that, thanks to the stainless steel structure, the line can be cleaned quickly and thoroughly.

At a glance

Careful handling of the ravioli
Space-saving pick and place machine
Fast and thorough line cleaning
Quality control by image processing system
Wide varietey of sizes
Quick changeover times

Quote

“We have been able to pack anything we have invented during the last ten years automatically with our Schubert installation. We appreciate how reliable Schubert has proved when working with us, as well as the quality and flexibility of the machinery.”

Edoardo Bacchini, Managing Director of Surgital

Technical Details

Speedy but careful loading and packaging

The deep-frozen ravioli are transported unsorted out of the freezer tunnel and into the first sub-machine at a temperature of around –20ºC. The F4 robots, equipped with suction cups, pick them up from the conveyor by means of careful air intake and position them accurately into the trays, which have already been taken from the magazine by an F3 transfer robot and placed on a chain conveyor. This in turn transports the trays in opposite direction to the product conveyor flow through the individual stations, where they are loaded by F4 robots. The completely loaded trays are placed on a discharge conveyor and leave the Schubert machine to head towards the sealing system.

Overall performance