Although its main purpose is simple to understand, a cartoner is the summation of a number of individual processes that all must be coordinated in order to successfully insert a product into its packaging container. Used largely in food and beverage industries, the cartoner is applicable to a variety of products ranging from inserting pouches of food product into a box, to inserting pharmaceutical bottles into their shipping container. While the cartoner was mainly a mechanical contraption in yesteryear, today’s cartoner is an automated, synchronized machine capable of high-speed and integrated operation.
Application Challenges
- Reduce Mechanical Components
Eliminate mechanical components to achieve fall-through design and eliminate mechanical slippage and stretch
- Synchronize Motion for all Axes
Coordinate all motion of the feed belts, flap tuckers, carton feeder, and loaders for high speed throughput
- Quick Product Changeover
Flexible motion controller to store and create variable product sizing selectable through HMI interface
- Increased Throughput
Coordinate axes for faster continuous motion
- Reduced Downtime
Offer greater uptime by streamlining the application process, eliminating mechanical breakage, and reducing product changeover
Applicable Products
| Servo and Motion Products | Features | Benefits |
| Up to 48 axes of control | Central point of control for all axes |
| Electronic camming and gearing | Synchronized control of all axes for increased throughput and reduced downtime |
| High-performance Mechatrolink-II motion network | Reduce mechanical components by integrating all coordinated motion |
Application Details
The cartoner operates as an inline process of a packaging line. Product is fed into the cartoner by an in-feed conveyor that places the product into pockets. Either the in-feed conveyor must synchronize the product to the cartoner pockets or the cartoner must adjust the product position. When product is detected, the cartoner grabs a carton from a magazine and places the carton into a pocket on the carton belt. As the carton is placed on the belt, the rear flaps of the box are closed and sealed. The carton and the product are then transferring down the belts together and a mechanism pushes the product into the carton. After placing the product in the carton, the cartoner folds one of the top flaps of the carton and applies glue through a glue applicator that is activated by a programmable limit switch function. This glue applicator places the precise amount of blue on the carton prior to feeding the carton to fold the final flap and send the carton on to the next process.
The cartoner utilizes the carton belt as the master axis to drive the remaining axes. In-feed conveyors align product to the carton belt pockets, cartons are placed in synchronization with the carton belt pockets, the push plate pushes product in synchronization with the carton belt pockets, and the flap tuckers and glue applicators are all run based off the position of the carton on the master carton belt. This application lends itself to one central point of control that is capable of gearing and electronic camming to control and synchronize multiple axes for high throughput.
Incorporating the Yaskawa Sigma II and Legend lines of amplifiers and servomotors introduces the highest quality servo equipment in the industry to increase performance and reduce downtime. In addition, Yaskawa motion controllers can be integrated into larger control systems using Yaskawa machine controllers as well as a variety of communication capabilities, to provide ultimate connectivity and complete Yaskawa solutions.
Additional Information
This overview contains the same information as the page, but in some cases may contain more and should be used if a printed version is required.
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