The customer is a food manufacturer and contract packager. The cups to be packaged contain soup and sauce pastes.

Here, too, Soldati AG designed a custom machine tailored to the customer’s needs. This is a typical example of how manual processes in production can be automated, as previously the cups were aligned by hand and placed into the cartons. Since the system went into production, this is now done automatically. The customer saves its employees valuable time and also ensures continuous production and meets the quality requirements of its clients.

As a preliminary step, the cardboard boxes are placed on the conveyor belt by hand. The cups are transferred from the filling line into the system via a chute and line up one behind the other. They are then divided into two lanes and separated into groups of four cups per row, where they are centered. The cups are aligned accordingly using their tabs. The robotic arm picks up two sets of four cups and places them into the prepared, aligned carton. The second layer is then inserted. The filled box is now ejected. The ability of the boxes to line up automatically creates a corresponding level of autonomy, allowing the employee to focus primarily on other processes.

The highly compact system packs up to 4,200 cups per hour.