End customers in the cosmetics industry are now demanding that machine manufacturers develop systems with maximum adaptability, as the market requires ever faster changes in the presentation and packaging of goods.

Shiseido is a Japanese luxury and cosmetics company with an international presence. Founded in Tokyo in 1872, it is one of the oldest cosmetics companies in the world. The European headquarters and two production plants have been based in France for thirty years. Machine builder Unista, based in the Nantes region, was commissioned by Shiseido to develop and build two packaging machines. The aim was to achieve maximum flexibility. This is because Shiseido uses containers and packaging in various shapes and sizes for its diverse range of cosmetics in the luxury segment.

Unista has been manufacturing packaging lines for ten years and specializes in the development and construction of robot-assisted production systems. The newly developed machine type not only enables a wide range of container variations, but also different batch sizes depending on requirements - with minimal changeover times.

For Unista, the key requirement was flexibility without compromising engineering, kinematic control or the production process. Anthony Forget, Managing Director at Unista France, explains: "We needed an extremely flexible machine to do justice to Shiseido's wide range of products." David Ranchy, sales engineer from the Beckhoff branch in Nantes, adds: "Unista's requirements corresponded very closely to the characteristics of our XTS transport system, which now acts as the central element of the machine and significantly increases production flexibility."

Unista uses an XTS system with a total track length of four meters, achieving a compact machine design that makes optimum use of the available floor space. The transport solution is supplemented by two six-axis robots for product handling. The first robot handles the loading and unloading processes. It transfers the filled cosmetics containers to the XTS system, which transports them to the respective processing stations using a total of eleven movers. The second robot places lids on the containers and turns them slightly. In the downstream handling device, the lids are fully screwed on with a defined torque and angle of rotation. During the final quality check, the containers are sorted into good and bad parts. An important requirement for the implementation was to protect the high-quality cosmetics containers from damage so that the flawless packaging meets the high standards of the Shiseido brand.

A key advantage of XTS for this is the individual product transport, which is not subject to a rigid cycle between the processing stations. This individual and precise positioning of the movers has made it possible to achieve an optimum balance between gentle product handling and maximum production output.

The software-based control functions also make it easy to adapt to changing formats such as different container diameters. All that is required is a change to the software parameters instead of a complex, time-consuming and costly reconfiguration of the machine.

In addition to XTS, Unista also uses servo drives and servomotors from Beckhoff for the handling unit for screwing on the lids. In addition, there are numerous other components from the Beckhoff portfolio, such as Ethercat terminals for communication between the control components and Twinsafe products for implementing machine safety. The advantages are obvious: all components from a standardized hardware and software platform means a single point of contact and simpler, faster integration.

The entire machine is controlled by a space-saving CX5140 embedded PC installed in the control cabinet in combination with Twincat 3 automation software. The drive technology of the handling unit is particularly compact: EL7211 servo drives in terminal format control the AM8100 dynamic servomotors, which are connected using One Cable Technology (OCT). This reduces cabling costs by up to 50 percent and gives the machine a particularly tidy appearance. A CP3918 control panel serves as an HMI for Unista's own visualization system.

According to the experts at Unista, the simple engineering and straightforward commissioning with XTS and PC-based control enabled them to provide an operational machine in less than ten weeks. With this short time-to-market and its high level of flexibility in operation, the XTS application for Shiseido is a prime example of mechanical engineering in the sense of Industry 4.0 and a pioneer in the cosmetics packaging sector.

F.Würthner/as