KR QUANTEC packs Champagne bottles at Piper-Heidsieck & Charles Heidsieck
Tradition can go hand in hand with technological innovation, as two major champagne brands have proven. KUKA robots have been unpacking bottles atPiper-Heidsieck and Charles Heidsieck for several months now.
KR Quantec K
KUKA
According to Fege the greatest difficulty lay in the variety of bottle formats and storage methods (champagne or burgundy wine). Indeed, production varies according to the various bottle volumes (half bottle, 75 cl, magnum) and shapes (champagne, Piper RARE or the new Crayère bottle). It was clear that a simple manipulator would not be able to handle all of these formats. This led Fege to design and develop a robot cell that could meet these challenges. A shelf-mounted KUKA QUANTEC K robot removes the champagne bottles from the crates and places them on a conveyor belt which transports them along to the packaging steps.
Implementation / Solution
What makes this cell so ingenious is the simplicity of the gripper tool, which consists of suction ramps without a moving element. To change the bottles, the operator exchanges two ramps and two cradles, eliminating the need for a tool. To simplify the work of the user, the various bottle formats have been given specific color codes. This means that a green crate for “X” format bottles corresponds to a robot gripper of the same color.
A further advantage of this system is that, thanks to a relatively short gripper, the shelf-mounted robot is able to dive deep into the bottle crate. In this way, it is not necessary to use crates of less depth and capacity.
(KUKA case study siehe link oben rechts)
Other news from the department research and development
