Pallet logistics is becoming increasingly important in many companies, especially in the building materials industry. Growing demands on construction sites, resource efficiency, load securing requirements and even in-house transportation are presenting companies with new challenges. With a flexible system for handling return pallets, productivity can be increased and the necessary process reliability achieved.

The current situation is often as follows: After being used, the pallets are delivered to the construction site in a nested state. Before they can be fed back into the production process, the stacks must be manually de-nested and assembled into a sorted stack. At the same time, a visual check is carried out to ensure that they are of the correct type. Depending on the production program, the corresponding, newly sorted pallet stacks are fed into the system. In the event of a product change, the pallet stacks must be removed and replaced. This results in downtimes in the packaging line.

Keller has therefore developed a solution: In future, an industrial robot will take over this task. A gripper optimized for the application was developed for this purpose. A sensor detects the orientation of the top pallet in the previously automatically positioned and nested pallet stacks. The gripper removes the top pallet accordingly, aligns it and feeds it to a conveyor in the packaging system. One innovation of the solution is the integrated measurement of the length of the pallets. If the dimensions deviate from the target pallet, ejection is automated so that the production process no longer has to be interrupted unnecessarily.

Thanks to the flexibility of the robot and intelligent control software, the movement sequences can be quickly and easily adapted to the respective spatial situation. This also allows the compact handling solution to be retrofitted in many installation situations. as