Cavanna is an Italian company specialized in packaging systems flowpack allowing a small wrapper to wrap a single product or group of products with a plastic film. Among the various sectors in which these types of packaging are used, there is first of all the food sector (industrial baking monotype and assorted biscuits, chocolate, products for breakfast, sweet and savory snacks, bread substitutes, coffee pods for automatic and semi automatic coffee maker, cheese, frozen products), but also non food, cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries. The product, independently of whether it be food based or other, is packaged and protected in order to preserve its quality, to ensure security and at the same time facilitate the opening to the final consumer. Recently Cavanna has increased also its capabilities in the secondary packaging with a complete range of robot that can erect, fill and close boxes and cartons.
Major asset of the company is the capability to design complete medium and high speed packaging lines and systems, starting from processing lines up to the overwrapping of products with different forms and characteristics, special packaging and packaging materials, and a wide range of opening and re closing solutions for wrapping and overwrapping applications. The innovation based in the manufacturing of complete medium and high speed lines for delicate products with different forms allowed Cavanna to become a reference partner of important multinational corporations in the food sector for the domestic but specially foreign market. Encountered innovations are the artificial vision, robotics manipulation, barrier seals and system sensibility to mechanical and physical characteristics of packaging materials, reduction or elimination of rejected pieces due to machine stop, ergonomic solutions for line operators, flexibility in layout planning, bivalency or modularity of a unique system for the treatment or the manufacturing of products with different formats or packaging. In order to regularly face up to the technological challenge the 3% of the company turnover is annually re invested in R&D (12 mln of € in the past 5 years).
The areas towards which the Group’s investments are oriented now are the packaging of fresh and frozen food, the engineering based on sanitary design international standards and the compatibility of the systems with polymeric and cellulosic packaging materials of the latest generation, produced with renewable resources.
At Iba, we will show a wrapping solution, completely based on the vision system with high resolution linear cameras, is made for delicate products with irregular shape, like croissants. The G-44 robotic unit, equipped with 2 Delta arms, takes the croissants transported on a conveyor at 120/150 ppm and places them directly on the wrapper’s “chainless” infeed.
The advantages are remarkable and easy to guess:
- Just one manipulation of the products (pick up and deposit):
- Reduced sliding surface
- Possibility to work with products that can easily vary their dimensions
- Possibility to have fast changeovers
- Lower cleaning times, due to a lower number of components installed on the line
- Just one operator managing the whole line
The vision system is based on last generation linear and color cameras, controlled by Cognex. This unit is able to support up to 4 cameras in parallel, along with another series of vision sensors (for example, laser profiles, matrix cameras..) and it represents a standard for the global market. The robots are Delta type with 1300 mm diameter, 4 axles, controlled by Rockwell Kinetics 5700 (another standard on a global scale). The modularity of these units allows them to be installed in a series with a little effort and with a very simple software. They are built with standardized frames and optimized measures. The robot unit is complete with a flow wrapper model Zero4, a medium range wrapper but in any case able to satisfy the most ambitious requirements. Being part of an automatic wrapping line, the wrapper is equipped with accessories such as the automatic reel splicer and the driven unwinding roller. The electronics is Allen Bradley.
For more info on Cavanna click here
