Creating a pallet loop with gradual palletizing?

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Ethan H2 asked Feb 15, '21 Ethan H2 answered Feb 19, '21

Creating a pallet loop with gradual palletizing?

I need to create a closed loop(irl it is a Unibilt system) with ~12 empty pallets and at a specific point, a robot will move 1 box onto a pallet. There is a feed conveyor that the robot will pickup at, it will pickup box 1 and put on pallet 1. Then the loop will move one position forward and the robot will put box 2 on pallet 2. And so on...

Somehow I need to be able to move an empty pallet, a partially filled one, and a full one.

Each pallet is assigned a sku/color, so as the conveyor feeds boxes in the pattern 1 , 2 , 4, 5 ,7. The loop will need to move 1 click, load, 2 clicks, load, 1 click, load, 2 clicks, load... pretty much the loop rotation is dependent on the sku pattern approaching the robot.

For what FlexSim Provides, I would image an AGV loop would be best, but I am open to ideas.

Biggest question is how to move partially loaded pallets and resume loading once it returns.

Software Version:

FlexSim 21.0.2

flexsim 21.0.2 sorting loop palletizing sku

robot-loop-drawing.png (27.6 KiB)

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Jason Lightfoot ♦ commented · Feb 16, 2021 at 12:40 PM

@Ethan H2 How are the pallets moved in reality? Do the pallets visit the robot to recieve boxes multiple times, and if so do you already know/generate the sequence?

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Jason Lightfoot ♦ Jason Lightfoot ♦ commented · Feb 19, 2021 at 02:18 PM

How are they moved in the loop in reality - on AGVs? On a conveyor?

I think it would be good if you put something together to start and then we can look at specific cases for the logic.

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Ethan H2 Jason Lightfoot ♦ commented · Feb 16, 2021 at 02:59 PM

Yes, the pallets will revisit the robot multiple times until a full pallet is made.

The sequence is generated by the order in which the boxes(blue in the picture) come off of various lines and feed into a final conveyor. It will be random, so a barcode scanner at the robot will tell the loop which pallet needs to be loaded onto, and the loop will turn until that pallet is next to the robot and it can load.

Expect random patterns of boxes to feed the robot, and the robot/ loop will sort them to their designated pallets.

At the red points, full pallets are removed via forklift, and at the same point an empty pallet will be added.

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Answer 1 · 2021-02-19T15:23:26Z

Ethan H2 answered Feb 19, '21

I was able to figure out my issue! Thank you for the help. If I run into more problems I will post again on this page.

Thanks Jason!

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