Robotic Bottle Unscrambler Debuts at Pack Expo

At Pack Expo (Sept. 11-13), Omega Design Corp. is introducing a fully automatic robotic unscrambler that separates, orients and positions plastic bottles onto a conveyor or stabilizing pucks. The new system is recommended for lines running complex or multiple shapes of bottles, jars, vials, tottles, jugs and tubes.

The system uses one or more pick-and-place robots of the multi-axis, parallel-kinematic type – also known as a Delta or spider robot. Each robot can handle up to 90 containers/min. The integrated hopper minimizes footprint, and the dual-conveyor system is optimized for robotic handling, with intelligent infeed metering control to reduce recirculation of bottles.

A key feature is Omega’s dual infeed system, which presents two containers at once — one on each conveyor — to the robot from a single hopper. This approach is said by the company to yield “throughputs unobtainable by conventional methods,” while also minimizing the machine’s footprint. The system’s flexibility enables increasing speeds by adding larger hopper capacity and additional robot modules.

The system has a 15" touchscreen controller, a Rockwell Automation Optix visualization platform and an Allen-Bradley PLC. Rapid pushbutton changeover with a limited number of change points helps speed setup and reduce downtime between product runs.