Robopac, plug and play functions for increasingly customised and sustainable systems

Schneider Electric's Pac Drive 3 solutions offer Aetna Group and its brands a high degree of modularity in installing highly customised solutions, with a focus on energy savings.

Essential for all Aetna Group companies, a commitment to controlling environmental impact is maintained through best practices ranging from careful selection and optimisation of materials to attention to the energy consumption of the systems developed. Constant improvement, aided by investment in research and development, enables all the group companies to offer the market increasingly sustainable solutions. 

A Successful Partnership 

The real added value of the systems by Robopac, one of the Group's flagship brands, lies in their maximum flexibility during construction, which allows them to be tailored to the customer’s needs. The need to meet customer requirements more effectively prompted the choice of Schneider Electric's Pac Drive 3 solutions, including the brushless motors adopted in Robopac's flagship products: examples include the Prasmatic series TC 500 combined shrink wrapping and case packing machines and the Ares single-column palletizer with ML gantry manipulators for layer formation. These are highly flexible and innovative systems for medium and high-speed production, with performance of up to 6 layers per minute, capable of adapting to all the needs of the Food and Beverage market. 

The advantages of Pac Drive 3 solutions. The plug and play approach enabled by Schneider Electric's Pac Drive 3 allows Robopac to rapidly implement new functions and expand the range of formats planned in the plant even during advanced development and testing phases. For Robopac, the advantage is evident, making it easier to customise, expand and modify the machinery being built, and also in terms of meeting delivery schedules. Schneider Electric solutions make it possible to expand the performance of systems with maximum modularity, responding to requests for design changes often agreed on with customers during construction. Added to this is an advantage at the software development stage, thanks to the robotics libraries available, which drastically reduce programming times for manufacturing operations.
From format change to new materials: maximum flexibility. There are numerous benefits for companies that choose Robopac shrinkwrappers and palletizers. In addition to flexibility for format changes, which is essential to respond to production diversification, the market demands plants able to operate with different packaging types and materials. This variety of applications can only be provided by machines with plug and play components.

Guaranteed energy savings

Thanks to electronics applied to mechanics, respect for the environment can be combined with energy savings, and thus economic benefits: an additional strength of the systems designed by Robopac. Thanks to Schneider Electric's DC Bus connectors, the system takes advantage of the discontinuity in speed imposed by the different movements required by the control boards of the operations during the production process. During deceleration, energy is put back into circulation, so that it can be reused by the other motors for acceleration in the active phase. In this way, energy is not dissipated in the form of heat, but used for subsequent plant movement, providing a reduction of around 40% in electrical energy consumption.
Like the other Aetna Group companies, Robopac has focused on this effective use of electronics in plants to continue developing its business. Packaging is an ever-changing sector, in which Schneider Electric solutions are able to adapt to meet the needs of manufacturers, adopting an approach in which customer satisfaction and sustainability are the shared vision that is the foundation of a partnership between the two companies stretching back over more than 20 years and destined to continue over time.