Anyone for Tea?

Unilever Invites Robot & Vacuum Pump For Tea

The traditional cup of tea at any time of the day is synonymous with the British way of life. And it is of course tasty enough even for a Chimp!

Now, for the first time, a robot and a vacuum pump have been teamed up to handle catering packs of Britain’s favourite cuppa. The catering packs consist of large quantities of tea bags within a polythene bag.

The vacuum pump, supplied by Busch UK, and the Fanuc robot are performing their double act daily at Unilever’s Manchester packing plant.

The Busch pump has been the key to the installation of the Fanuc robot which is picking up catering packs of tea bags in quantities of 300 to 1,610 at speeds of up to 15 bags a minute and large corporate cases at the rate of three bags a minute.

Fanuc chose the Busch pump with a side channel blower to provide maximum vacuum in the tea packing area of the plant.

Fanuc engineer Roger Bastow, said: “We needed a blower on this application because of the irregularity of the polythene bag. We try to use a conventional vacuum that has to generate a seal. The blower is like a big vacuum cleaner.

“We looked at three suction generator suppliers and chose Busch because it was within the price range and we knew it would do the job.”

Roger Ray, project manager with Bradman Lake who installed the robot and vacuum pump for the Unilever application, said: “The really clever bit is the ability of the system to pick up the differing sizes of tea bag catering packs. The robot relies on the vacuum pump for its blowing capability to provide vacuum.

“The application needs a large flow of air. The function of the pump is to pull the vacuum in order to lift the tea bags against the pick-up head. The high flow is needed to draw the polythene together to create sufficient seal to pick up the tea bag.

“Some of the bags are in two’s or four’s and that generates a fair degree of leakage for which a high volume of air flow is needed through the vacuum. The side channel blower shifts a huge quantity of air.

“Fanuc came up with the idea having a pump blower on the machine. In the early days Fanuc experimented in their factory before concluding that this was the way to go.”

Unilever placed the order for the whole system with Bradman Lake who then placed an order with Fanuc for the complete robot system – a six axis M710 general-purpose robot with a payload of 70 kg.