While palletizing corrugated cases is a regular automation application, doing so in a cold room that is regularly hosed with water to stay clean is especially challenging.
Bringing sweet tea and juice to the market requires palletizing the cases filled with respective bottles to be palletized for transportation to retail outlets. Due to their perishable nature, they are stored in cold rooms. A customer turned to Motion Controls Robotics Inc (MCRI) from Fremont, OH, to replace an inefficient existing system, in which the vacuum cups and pumps utilized did not cope well with the average temperature in the cold room of 35°F (1.7°C). This caused vacuum cups to become rigid and pumps to not provide enough vacuum to hold cases leading to regular drop downs. A better system had to be found to handle cardboard cases weighing up to 42lbs (19kg).