LRC-400 & LRC-700 - Medical Products

Installation Elements

• Langen LRC-400 tray packer.


• Langen LRC-700 combined case packer and palletizer.


• Specialized collation system.


• Langen / Imball Tray Erector.

Product

• Medical product pouches joined together in pairs and separated by a perforation in small and medium size formats.
  

• Three carton sizes: two sizes contain either 200 or 100 of the medium-sized medical product pouches, and one carton size contains 200 of the small medical product pouches.



• There are 6 case sizes in C-flute or RSC style cases.



• Standard North American pallets.

Method of Operation

LRC-400

• Trays are erected by the dual-head Langen/Imball EFFE-16 tray erector, which is capable of producing trays in excess of 120 per minute. The trays are erected in an "on-demand" fashion as dictated by high and low level sensors on the tray infeed conveyor and are metered into the LRC-400 system.
  
  
• Pairs of pouches are produced at a rate of 6000 pouches per minute (3,000 pairs). The pouches are carried to the LRC-400 system on a lugged, three-lane incline conveyor in continuous motion.
  
  
• The lugged conveyor delivers the three lanes of pouches to two collation stations that operate on an alternating basis. The first collator accepts 100 or 50 pouch pairs from each lane and stacks them into three separate buckets. After the last pouch has been accepted at the first collation wheel the next 100 or 50 pouch pairs will travel to the second collation wheel to repeat the process.
  
  
• The completed stacks of pouches are then offset for right angle discharge into an indexing conveyor and the filled buckets are indexed to the pouch funnelling station.
  
  
• In the funnelling section, the stacks of 50 or 100 pouch pairs are side shifted and rotated while being brought to the pick-up point of the LRC-400.
  
  
• The LRC-400 robot uses its customized mechanical gripper to pick the pouch pair stacks and load them into the open trays.
  
  
• The tray conveyor includes a glue closure section after the loading station to close and seal the cartons before discharging them from the LRC-400 system.
  

• A shrink bundler is included to wrap trays that are stacked prior to wrapping. A by-pass conveyor carries trays that are destined directly for case packing and do not require shrink-wrapping.Product is carried from an up-stream flow-wrapper on a conveyor belt and is side-transferred to a low-friction conveyor belt where the product is accumulated.
  
  
• The trays are received directly from the LRC-400 or from a shrink-wrap machine depending on the product specification.
  
  
• The product infeed module uses pneumatically operated stops and rails to accumulate, stage, and group the trays received from the upstream equipment.
  
  
• The case erector erects cases on demand, seals the bottoms with tape and discharges them. These are then conveyed to the loading area within the LRC-700 robotic system.
  
  
• The LRC-700 picks the collation from the tray staging system and loads the case directly. The case flap handling system uses a funnel that holds the case flaps out and helps guide the product into the cases by partially lowering the funnels into the cases. A series of sensors verify that the load has been properly placed.
  
  
• The filled cases are conveyed out of the LRC-700 and to the case-sealing machine where the top of the case is sealed with tape and discharged to the accumulation conveyor of the case staging area for palletizing.
  
  
• A pallet is automatically transported into the loading cell when it is required; upon arriving at the load position, a scissor lift raises the pallet to the loading height. As the pallet is loaded, the scissor lift gradually drops to accomodate the loading height.
  
  
• The LRC-700 picks one case at a time from the case staging area and forms the complete pallet configuration as specified by the pallet load patterns. While the pallet is being loaded, the LRC-700 simultaneously case packs as the case accumulation area builds the full case load complement.
  
  
• A completed pallet is automatically discharged and the LRC-700 is primed for another pallet load cycle.