The importance of box conditioning: banding solution on CARTONPACK 4

Leaving the converter’s factory, most boxes travel to a packaging line. There, transferring the sometimes small and slippery boxes from their container into the packaging machine in an efficient, operator-friendly way can be a real challenge. Even for trained operators this can be a tricky business which risks damaging the boxes. Banding the boxes seems to be the obvious answer. However, manual banding slows down the converter’s production line and requires additional operators.

A customer with a folding-gluing line equipped with CARTONPACK 4 was looking for a solution to deliver counted and banded box batches to his customer, without reducing the productivity of his own production line. Instead of filling the boxes loosely into a shipping container, he wanted an efficient banding system which would still allow him to take advantage of the efficiency of this folding-gluing line. Recognizing the potential for solving an issue creating a bottleneck in the production process, BOBST specialists began working on a system that would speed up the banding process with CARTONPACK 4.

Using the efficiency of a the fully automated packer
The solution was seemingly simple, but efficient. The CARTONPACK 4 is equipped with up to 4 dedicated transport tables, placed onto the existing CARTONPACK container transport system. CARTONPACK counts the boxes, but instead of filling them into a transport container, the box batch is placed onto a transport table. The table then rolls to the banding station, where the box batch is pushed into the added banding machine and banded with a paper strip. The empty transport table automatically goes back to be filled again, while the batch can easily be picked up by an operator at the end of the line and put into a shipping container.

The batches are automatically pushed into the banding machine

5-minute changeovers
At the packaging line, the batches can be picked up from the containers and transferred without complex box manipulation. Specific paper bands used for banding can be removed easily and quickly, speeding up the process and avoiding boxes to slip or being damaged. This fully automated and very flexible system adapts to different kinds of boxes, can be operated with any banding machine and retrofitted all CARTONPACK 4 packers. The setup of the system is done with a push of a button via the HMI SPHERE and MATIC, for rapid changeovers. 5 minutes are enough to change from container filling to batch banding. The banding solution ensures high productivity at the folding-gluing line delivery saves an additional workforce for occasional banding jobs. 

Thanks to this clever innovation, solid board boxes can now be banded together in counted batches at speeds of up to 80,000 boxes per hour, compared to the 25'000 boxes which can be achieved with a manual solution. This system gives converters the flexibility they need to adapt to customer requirements and maximize the efficiency of their production line. A real win-win situation for converters and brand owners alike.

BOBST