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Moba equipment is packed with technology. In previous editions of Moba News, we explained more about Moba Autopack and our case packer family. Now it is time to take a closer look at a specific part of the automation process: the palletizing of trays. For this task, Moba offers the MR40, as part of the MR robotics series. In this article, you will learn all about this tray palletizer and what this flexible robot can do for your business.
By adding a tray palletizer to your operation, you speed up the palletizing process immensely. When you have a daily production of 500,000 eggs, more than 7,500 stacks of eggs need to be moved, with a total weight of 30,000 kilograms! This is a time-consuming and physically demanding job, and the MR40 is the perfect solution to take upon this task! Moba's MR40 tray palletizer automatically places the eggs coming from a Farmpacker or an egg grader in a row of stacks on a pallet, with a maximum capacity of 108,000 eggs per hour (300 cases).
Flexible gripper
The MR40 is known for its robust design and gripper, which is the key to its flexibility. The stacks of trays arrive one by one at the tray palletizer. When there are four stacks ready, the MR40 picks them up and places them on the pallet. The special roller conveyors at the pick-up position ensure that the stacks to be picked up are always exactly positioned, regardless of conditions such as tray quality or air humidity. And thanks to the unique construction of the gripper, the picked-up stacks are not slid into position on the pallet but are positioned directly in exactly the right spot, resulting in a perfect alignment of stacks. The pins are then withdrawn effortlessly from underneath the trays and freely slide away, without interfering with stacks that are already on the pallet. The MR40 not only handles known pallet systems but can also stack on wooden pallets, such as Euro and American pallets.
The MR40 is not only capable of handling stacks of trays, but the gripper can also pick up layer pads and empty pallets to automatically create a full pallet. If cardboard layer pads and pulp trays are used, the gripper can be used to rotate the stacks by 90 degrees per layer. The big advantage of this way of stacking is that the layer pad will not warp under the weight of the stacks, creating a more stable pallet. This way of palletizing will eliminate the need for a double tray below every stack as well, which is commonly used to compensate for instability caused by irregular palletizing.
The gripper can cope with trays that have different row pitches, for example, plastic and pulp trays. This is done by actively shifting the forks to a different pitch while switching from plastic to pulp and vice versa. This unique and patented feature enables farmers to use the MR40 to its full extent.
To process pulp and plastic trays at the same time, a smart gripper is not the only requirement. Double pallet and layer pad stocks are also needed. However, in case the double product feature is not required, the extra stock positions can be used to assign two extra palletizing positions, reducing the time staff needs to remove full pallets from the robot cell.
Transporting the trays
Once the pallet is ready, Moba offers the option to equip the MR40 with automatic pallet transport. This open-constructed transport system is designed to be as close as possible to the floor to enable picking up full pallets with a standard pallet jack. The pallet transport can be economically configured within the space of the MR40 robot cell, as well as an extension to the outside of the cell, where full pallets automatically pass a safety screen.
If you want to know more about the possibilities the MR40 has to offer, please visit the product page on our website. And don't miss the next Moba News, as we will discuss another member of the MR family: the MR50 De-palletizer.