Cheap, high speed pack collating and over wrapping

Marden Edwards has recently supplied one of its B100LH8 collating and overwrapping machines to a multi media supply company in California, USA. The application involved the collating and over wrapping of two plastic, DVD style, clamshell cases which contain digital media devices.

To achieve the high collating speed of 80 cases per minute on the B100LH8 low cost overwrapper, an innovative collating system was designed which allowed the bundle to be made cheaply and efficiently.

Marden Edwards' usual method of product stacking on the B100LH8 is to lift the pack up to sit on sprung fingers. This system is tried and tested and suits a wide variety of packs and collation configurations. However, the pneumatic system used on the B series range is limited to 60 rows per minute. For speeds greater than this traditionally Marden Edwards supplied the LX range of wrapping machinery which incorporate either a mechanical or servo stacker suitable for speeds of 120 lifts per minute or greater.

To keep the system within budget, and because the finished collation is only one pack wide, a new design of drop stacker was incorporated into the machine. A drop stacker works by gravity creating the collation.

The first pack in the collation is fed from the side of the machine across the top of the pack transfer pusher plate. The pusher is then retracted and the pack drops down and the next pack is then fed across the top of it. The pusher then transfers the completed 2 pack collation into the wrapping machine whilst the first pack of the next collation is again fed across the top of the pusher plate.

This system has two advantages in that at no time does the pack have a great distance to fall and collating takes place at all points of the machine cycle. This provides plenty of time for pack feeding which puts little stress on either the product or the machine. The collating speed of 80 packs per minute was easily achieved.

This system is suitable for any single stack collation and can be configured to produce collations up to 6 packs high. Once collated, the 2 pack retail multipack is over wrapped in the normal way with a high quality diamond point end fold overwrap seal on each end of the collation.