Flexible Handling and Efficient Technology

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BEUMER Corporation, based in Branchburg, NJ, USA, has installed a complete packaging line for various types of cement for the supplier to the building industry Titan America. The BEUMER Group is known as a specialist for sophisticated installations and solutions in the field of material handling systems. The product portfolio offered by the internationally operating, family-owned manufacturer includes conveying, loading, palletizing and packaging technology as well as sortation and distribution solutions. With its branches and subsidiaries in more than 70 countries on all continents, the BEUMER Group has established a global presence. Since 1977, the company has been active in the U.S. with its subsidiary BEUMER Corporation in Branchburg, NJ and Atlanta, GA.

The cement industry in particular benefits from the broad spectrum of competencies offered by the internationally active specialist for intralogistics solutions. In the U.S. and elsewhere, the company is known for installations tailored to the customer’s individual needs.

High-Capacity Packaging Line:

One of the well-known clients of the BEUMER Group includes Titan America, a leading building material producer in the U.S. Three years ago, BEUMER received the contract for the installation of a complete packaging line at the company’s Pennsuco plant in Medley, Florida. The contract included a Roto-Packer supplied by Haver & Boecker, the high-capacity bag palletizer BEUMER paletpac® 5000 for high speed palletizing of cement bags as well as the innovative BEUMER stretch hood® M - system for the efficient film packaging of full pallets. One of the challenges in the design of this packaging line lay in the handling of different bag and pallet sizes. At the same time, additional protection against dirt, moisture and transport damage as well as high load stability and the optimized use of warehouse space were to be achieved.
Around 300,000 metric tons of varying types of cement leave the Florida plant every year. In view of their different materials and formats, the entire packaging installation was designed to be flexible in its handling. Titan America also expected the complete installation to be operated with virtually no manual supervision.

Varying Pallet Heights and Sizes:

Since the installation of the complete packaging line, up to 3600 bags are being filled, palletized and packaged every hour. Given Titan America’s range of cement including Portland cement at a bag weight of 94 pounds, Masonry cement at 70 pounds per bag, and Stucco cement weighing in at around 80 pounds, BEUMER recommended the installation of the high-capacity palletizer BEUMER paletpac® 5000. Handling stack heights of up to 2,400 mm, the flexible BEUMER paletpac® can manage all common pallet sizes and desired packing patterns automatically. Choosing between different bag and pallet sizes is managed by quick adaptations to the operating parameters in a multiple-application for all packing patterns. In order to keep friction at a minimum, BEUMER has covered the layer forming plates with a PTFE coating, allowing the cement bags to glide smoothly during layering, without rolling or loss of shape. The complete installation is driven by electricity alone, without any pneumatic or hydraulic components that would be susceptible to malfunctions caused by the amount of dust produced when handling cement.
The BEUMER Group has put great emphasis on stack stability and stack accuracy in the design of the paletpac® equipment. The bags of cement are stacked in individual layers on wooden pallets. Each layer is pressed from below against the closed layer forming plates, which expels any remaining air from the bags and adds considerably to the stability of the stack. The finished full pallet is conveyed by a heavy-duty pallet roller conveyor. The sizable pallet storage space at its end, allowing two finished pallets to be stored side by side, enables forklift drivers to pick up two pallets at a time for transport to the warehouse during peak operations. This innovative solution reduces forklift traffic by 50%.

Excellent Stacking Stability with Stretch hood:

As soon as the finished pallet reaches the BEUMER stretch hood installation, the size of the product and the necessary amount of packaging film is determined by automatic scanning. The flexible film hood is pulled over the complete stack, maintaining extreme tension in both the horizontal and the vertical direction. This bi-axial stretching protects the vertical stretch of the film beyond the cut-off limit of 15 percent. The resulting understretch of the film hood ensures that tension is retained in the film and the desired constricting force is achieved. Immediately before the end of the stretching process, the film is kept in place by applying the film press units, while horizontal tension is reduced by guiding the film underneath the pallet. With this approach, the film hood is secured into place through the under stretch beneath the pallet. This innovative technology offered by the BEUMER stretch hood® solution ensures excellent stack stability and protection against weather influence (UV rays, rain, dust, etc.) even after repeated handling of the pallet.

Compared with conventional packaging methods like stretch wrapping and shrink hooding, the BEUMER stretch hood® method combines the advantages of both systems, while simultanously eliminating their shortcomings. The result is a high-capacity packaging machine that boasts excellent display characteristics, five-sided product protection, elimination of laminates, protection against theft, minimized packaging costs and increased output capacities.
The BEUMER packaging line at Titan America was adapted and designed to the specific needs of the client. It allows the option of additional pallet loads to be inserted between the palletizer and the packaging machine, thus enabling stacks palletized elsewhere to be integrated into the packaging process.

The system is controlled by Allen-Bradley PLCs equipped with graphic displays. All control devices, including proximity switches and photo-cells are selected for dusty heavy-duty industrial use and connected via AS-I bus systems to the PLCs.

Storage and Shipping:

The finished pallet loads leaving the stretch hood machine are transferred on a series of roller conveyors to a doubling roller conveyor that is fed at two points by a transverse shuttle cart. This brings the two pallets together side-by-side, thus forming a single pick-up for the fork-truck consisting of two pallet loads. As a result, the number of trips to the warehouse or for truck loading is cut in half.

The double pallet handling capability not only reduces travel time, but it further saves time by allowing truck loading from just one side of the vehicle. This results in faster movement of trucks through the packhouse loading area. Titan America holds the finished pallet stacks, well protected by stretch hood film, in warehouse storage in a two stack high arrangement.

Release link: http://www.beumer.com/htcms/en/news/mehr-2.html