Addressing manufacturers’ need for faster, more flexible cartoning systems, ESS Technologies has enhanced the design of their line of automatic horizontal and vertical cartoners. Engineered to meet the needs of pharmaceutical, cosmetics, and medical device manufacturers, the ESS SC Series and VC Series cartoners offer reliable performance and fast changeover.
The SC Series Horizontal Cartoners now feature a servo-controlled rotary carton feeder that increase both speed and reliability. Model SC60 uses intermittent motion and servo controls to erect, load and close 60 cartons/min. For higher speeds, the Model SC100 and Model SC150 use continuous motion to achieve packaging speeds of up to 100 and 180 cartons/min.
Allen Bradley Kinetix® 5500 servo drives control the rotary carton infeed, allowing the vacuum arms to reliably pick, form, and place horizontal cartons in the lugged carton transport conveyor. Allen Bradley CompactLogix® PLC and PanelView Plus 600 color, touchscreen HMI simplify operation of the cartoners and allow for a fast size changeover, typically 15 minutes or less. The SC Series uses tuck-flap closing standard and offers an option for hot melt glue closure. Options include automatic leaflet feeding, tamper evident labeling and carton coding.
For top-load cartoning applications, ESS re-engineered the VC30 intermittent-motion vertical cartoner to expand the types of cartons handled by the system as well as carton closure options. Originally designed to handle auto-bottom cartons with top tuck-flap top closure, ESS listened to customers and expanded the VC30’s carton erector to also erect top-loading cartons with bottom tuck or hot melt glue closures. A robotic loading system uses a FANUC multi-axis robot and ESS-designed end-of-arm tooling to load bottles with or without topserts, cartons, sachets, and blister packs at a rate of up to 30 cartons/min. Top flap closure options include tuck or hot melt glue. As with the SC Series, the VC30 top load cartoner uses Allen Bradley CompactLogix® PLC and PanelView Plus 600 color, touchscreen HMI to simplify operation and size changeover.
Both cartoners integrate easily with off-the-shelf serialization systems from OEMs such as Optel Vision, Antares, Xyntek, Cognex and Keyence. ESS-integrated carton labelers, coder, and check weighers allow manufacturers to fully automate the serialization and cartoning processes. For full-line automation, ESS integrates their cartoners with robotic or wrap-around case packers and robotic pallet cells.
![“Another key [UDI] benefit, because we're calling that product by the same name across the healthcare supply chain… rich and robust data that we can access around supply consumption and utilization rates. One of the buzz terms we've heard during the COVID-19 crisis was what's my burn rate? How fast am I going through gowns, masks, gloves?” – Mike Schiller, Senior Director at AHRMM](https://img.healthcarepackaging.com/files/base/pmmi/all/image/2020/08/UDI.5f4d326e41d53.png?auto=format&fit=crop&h=146&w=340)
