SCARA Robot Equipped with an Integrated Vision System, Special End of Arm Vacuum Tooling and a Conveyor System Automates Packaging

Problem:
A major pharmaceutical company needed a fully automated packaging to load tablets into cavity blister packs. When packaged manually, unacceptably high scrap rates were common because of the tablets’ soft exterior finish.

Solution:
Engineers at Janssen-Ortho LLC (a Johnson & Johnson Company pharmaceutical partner) in Gurabo, PR designed and built an automated blister packaging system that solved the problem. They retrofitted a SCARA robot equipped with an integrated vision system, special end of arm vacuum tooling and a conveyor system to an existing packaging machine.
   
Operators load trays of molded tablets on the conveyor. After the tray is conveyed into the robot work envelope, the EPSON Vision Guide system finds the location of each tablet and sends this information to the robot. The EPSON EL650 robot equipped with a RC520 PC-based Controller moves over the tray and picks up multiple tablets. One attribute of the end of arm tooling is that each ‘‘finger’‘ is independently activated, giving it the ability to singulate tablets at pick up and set down. After picking up a load of tablets, the robot rotates around to the set down location and places each tablet into its individual blister cavity.  

Benefits:
30 day ROI
400% reduction is scrap rates.
Increased production rates.
Reduced packaging times.
Faster product changeover times.
Low training expenses because of the robot software’s ease of use.

This was the first robot installation at this plant. Its success paved the way for more applications.