Delta Robot Pick and Place

The Nexus delta robot pick and place system is a high-speed parallel-arm robot that picks products and places them where the line needs them: into a flow wrapper infeed, into cartons or trays, or from a bulk feed into a conveyor lane. Also called a pick and pack robot, a pick and place robot or a robotic pick and pack system, it handles primary, secondary and tertiary packaging tasks and is supplied and supported Australia-wide.

Also known as

• Pick and place robot or pick and place system
• Pick and pack robot or robotic pick and pack
• Picking and packing robot or picking and packaging robot
• Delta robot, parallel robot or spider robot

How a delta robot pick and place system works

A delta robot hangs above the conveyor with three lightweight arms joined to a single end effector. Because the motors stay fixed in the base and only the arms move, the robot accelerates and decelerates far faster than an articulated arm, which is what makes it suited to picking small items at high rates. A sensor or camera tells the controller where each product is, the robot tracks the moving conveyor, picks the item with a vacuum cup or gripper matched to the product, and places it in the target position with repeatable accuracy.

What it handles

• Primary packaging: picks bottles, flow-wrapped bars, bags, pouches and sachets at rapid speed with high repeatability, for example feeding a flow wrapper or loading a tray.
• Secondary packaging: loads products into boxes, cartons and trays, with simultaneous pick and place actions to cut cycle time. Pairs with the cartoning system.
• Tertiary packaging: bottle unscrambling, bottle into carton, bag into carton, and handling of bulk containers, pallets and shipping crates with a gripper sized to the load.

Where pick and pack robots are used

Bakery and confectionery lines where bars, biscuits and pastries arrive randomly on a belt and must be fed in a row into a wrapper. Fresh produce and meat where portions are placed into trays. Pharmaceutical and cosmetic lines placing blister packs, sachets and tubes into cartons. Hardware and consumer goods where items are picked from bulk and counted into packs. E-commerce and contract packing where mixed products are picked to order. The flow wrapper with robotic infeed is a typical Nexus installation: the delta robot replaces the operators who would otherwise hand-load the wrapper chain.

End effectors and grippers

The tool on the end of the arm decides what the robot can pick. Vacuum cups suit flat packs, bags and smooth bottles. Soft-touch and finger grippers suit fragile bakery products and irregular items. Multi-pick heads pick several items in one cycle for counting into packs. Tooling is specified to your product and can be changed for a new product with a quick-release coupling.

Delta robot versus cobot

A delta robot is built for speed on light items, typically under a few kilograms, and runs inside a guarded frame. A collaborative robot such as the cobot palletiser is slower, carries heavier loads and works alongside people without fencing. Use a delta robot for high-rate picking of small products; use a cobot for end-of-line palletising or slower handling tasks in shared spaces. Our guide to cobots versus industrial robots covers the difference.

Advantages

• Speed: supports continuous production flow across primary, secondary and tertiary packaging at rates hand loading cannot match.
• Versatility: covers handling from single items to full cartons with a change of gripper and recipe.
• Product quality: precise, gentle placement reduces errors and product damage.
• Labour: removes repetitive manual loading from the line and reduces downtime from staffing gaps.

Integration

The delta robot cell mounts over an existing conveyor and takes its product position from a sensor or vision system. It integrates with the upstream and downstream machines through the line controller, so it starts and stops with the wrapper, cartoner or filler it feeds. Nexus specifies the robot, the gripper, the conveyor tracking and the guarding as one system. See the full robotics range for palletising and other automation.

Send us your product, the rate you need and what the robot has to feed, and we will specify the pick and place system. Contact Nexus Australia for a quote.