From the cover panel station, cover panels are brought in and the manipulator uses suction cups to take a panel and place it on one of the four lanes, depending on the size.

A trolley then collects the panel and transports it to the stacker. Once a stack has been completed, the same trolley transports it on the central line to the packaging installation. An aligned top sheet is placed on top as it passes through the installation. Manual intervention for labelling or for applying cardboard is possible.

Then the stack goes to the cube and slat warehouses, where a manipulator lays top cubes or slats of the same length as the width of the packed panels.
Top and bottom cubes are placed simultaneously. For this purpose, we have built a cube and a slat warehouse with ten positions, where ten types of slats and top cubes are available.

Finally, the pack goes to the strapper. All this is done at a Takt time of 100 seconds per stack.

1. AN ALL-IN-ONE, COMPACT AND EFFICIENT INSTALLATION
   In order to keep the installation as compact as possible, we chose to integrate all operations into a single machine. That way, we retain space to buffer extra packs. This increases the packaging possibilities, making it more interesting for Unilin. In addition, the panel is picked up simultaneously with the alignment, which is also time-efficient. Finally, the cube and slat warehouses can be replenished manually while the installation is running, so we don’t lose any time there either.
2. FLEXIBILITY
   Both the cube and slat warehouse have ten positions with different sizes of slats and cubes. Packing can be done with or without bottom
   cubes. This allows the company to respond flexibly to the customers’ wishes.
3. SPEED
   Given the high output of the production line, the speed of the packing line is crucial. Each operation was engineered so that within the 60-second slot, a panel can be prepared to be used as a bottom panel and
   a top panel can be aligned onto the pack. In addition, the line can do one binding every 20 seconds. Concretely, the installation can handle 30 small stacks or 15 large stacks per hour.
4. INTEGRATION INTO THE EXISTING BUILDING
   Last but not least, a large discharge pipe and the limited height at certain points in the building required some extra thought and creativity to get everything in logically and efficient.

The installation communicates with Shop Floor software: this controls the entire schedule and informs the packaging installation on how the panels must be packed. Useful information is displayed to the operator.

We also work across installations when it comes to safety: the safety zone of the packaging installation was integrated into an existing safety zone. The cabling was also done by us.