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PalletCentral • September-October 2020
palletcentral.com
the innovative idea to multiple robotic integrators,
only to be told by each one that the system design
envisioned was too complex to build, program and
integrate.
Intuitive Robotic Solution
for Wooden Pallet Dismantling
Using these dismissals as motivation, the McVantage
Group persevered, committing to find a robotic
integrator that could help. In 2015, after an extensive
search, Alliance Automation (Van Wert, Ohio),
a Yaskawa Motoman qualified integration partner,
agreed to the challenge of building the very intuitive
machine that McVantage had in mind.
Because element exposure causes wooden pallets
to change size over time, system builders and
programmers had to plan for a plethora of pallet
variances that could arise, tasking the highly-skilled
team of engineers at Alliance Automation with the
most complicated programming ever. By the fall of
2017 the most intuitive robotic system in the wood
pallet industry was ready for the factory floor, and
after several months of ramp-up time, McVantage
Packaging implemented the consistent (45-hours
per week) use of their groundbreaking system at the
Tuscumbia, Alabama location.
Equipped with a powerful, efficient six-axis
Yaskawa Motoman® MH225 handling robot,
featuring high-rigidity speed reducers for extremely
fast cycle time and a 225-kg payload capacity for
application flexibility, the robotic solution delivered
the reliability needed. Built to imitate a human
worker's motion during the sawing process –
namely picking up a pallet and moving it through
a horizontal bandsaw – the innovative dismantling
Because element exposure
causes wooden pallets to change
size over time, system builders
and programmers had to plan
for a plethora of pallet variances
that could arise.
