Concise description
Protection from a manual loading station in a cartoning machine by cascading 3 miniature safety light curtains in U-shape.
Task
The French company ARIES PACKAGING develops and builds full automated solutions for handling of products as well as solutions for secondary and tertiary packaging. For one of his customer in the food industry Aries developed a cartoning machine with ergonomics as top priority, i.e., easy access for the machine operators. To guarantee the packaging quality the packages are transported by a gear belt with a cadence of 30 cartons/mm and with a transverse speed of 2 m/s. Taking into account the risk of injuring hands caused by the pusher of the belt, it was essential to integrate a protection system with high resolution to ensure the total safety of the operators.
Implementation
Miniature safety light curtain in U-shape cascading provides ergonomic and safe operation
To meet the requirements, Aries has chosen for the miniTwin, a miniature safety light curtain that provides value add to the operation of the cartoning machine.
The miniTwin allows keeping the safety distance, distance between light curtain and hazardous point, to be very short providing the operator a better ergonomics. With its small size and possibility cascading 3 light curtains in U-shape, without creating an unprotected area between the cascade curtains, the miniTwin is particular suited for the protection of fingers and hands. Additional LED on both sides give the operator a visible indication if the curtain is interrupted.
By using the miniTwin ARIES PACKAGING was able to propose their customer a safe, ergonomic and innovative solution.
Customer benefits
Electro-sensitive finger and hand protection ensures optimal operation of the machine |
Easy to integrate thanks to special miniaturization |
Cascading several systems ensures flexible adjustment to the area to be protected |
Fast consultation and service simplify the choice for the right solution |
Thanks to the integration of electro-sensitive protective equipment for hands and fingers based on miniature safety light curtains, ARIES PACKAGING was able to give its end customer a very safe and highly ergonomic packaging solution. The product design of the light curtain sticks, with one aspherical and one straight side, as well as the connector technology, made all three of the systems on the cartoning machine into a solution that was easy to integrate. The compact sensor housing and easy cascading option meant that the protection solution could be optimally adjusted to the geometry of the manual loading area to be monitored. "All these advantages and SICK's fast consultation and servicing convinced us that the miniature safety light curtain was the best choice," said Coraile Maupu, automation engineer at ARIES PACKAGING.
Application | |||
Industry: | Food | ||
Challenge: | Safety | ||
Product group: | Safety light curtains | ||
Reference customer: | ARIES PACKAGING |