Southington, Conn. – A 100 parts per minute label applicator system has been designed and built by Clear Automation to handle the application of labels to liquid cosmetic bottles. The system features a FANUC robot, Herma labeler, and a graphical touch-screen human machine interface (HMI).
"This system allows the manufacturer to apply labels at various stations along the travel of the indexer," said Ron McCleary, president of Clear Automation. "A label is applied, a batch code is laser etched, and the batch code is vision inspected for readability and accuracy at an impressive speed of 100 parts per minute."
Liquid cosmetic bottles travel to the cell along a conveyor, upright in pucks that are fed into the cell by a servo-driven screw that spreads them to match the pitch of a linear indexer. A robot picks them from the pucks and lays them horizontally onto the indexer. Bottles that fail the inspection are ejected from the indexer into a bin. Good bottles are ejected onto a conveyor to travel downstream to packaging.
Clear Automation chose the Herma labeler for the job after considering label size, label material, backing material, adhesive, and product throughput. The company can add barcode and/or date/lot code printing or laser etching, and vision inspection of label placement and print/etch quality.
Clear Automation designs, engineers, fabricates, and installs integrated robotic and machine vision systems. They manufacture automated assembly and packaging machinery for industries including personal care products, medical devices, automotive, electronics, and machine components.