Injection Molding: New Picker, Robots & Box Packer

Several new automation products have been introduced by Wemo of Sweden, part of the German Hahn Group and represented here by newly established Hahn Plastics Automation in Avon, Conn. (see Starting Up section). All of these were shown at October’s Fakuma 2018 show in Germany.

 •  Wemo’s new 3-5 linear sprue picker/robot for small parts (also exhibited at last month’s Plastec West show in Anaheim, Calif.) is a modestly priced servo picker/parts remover available with a pneumatic C-axis wrist. It has a Z stroke of 1500 mm, X stroke of 300 mm, and Y stroke of 1000 mm. One vacuum and one gripper circuit (with part-detection sensor) are included. Price is $11,499.

 •  At Fakuma, Wemo’s new eLine of economical servo robots was shown for injection machines from 25 to 1000 tons. The model 250 has a 25-kg (55-lb) payload capacity, suiting it to presses of 500 to 1000 tons. Intended to serve 80-90% of the market, these robots are designed for basic demold-and-drop, pick-and-place applications, but they can also manipulate parts for quality checks, labeling, laser marking, etc.

 •  Also new at Fakuma was the xPacker, an enclosed module for palletizing and depalletizing. A conveyor brings full boxes into the module, where a linear servo robot stacks the boxes on pallets. Multifunction tooling senses the size of the box and actuates only the vacuum holes needed for gripping the package. Thus, no setup is required. Plug-and-play design is said to make it easy to install.