The fish can stacker with two stations uses a 6-axis robot and a mechanism that changes the orientation of the can stacks. The cans are stacked vertically, which then have to be rotated 90 degrees to change their orientation from vertical to horizontal. This step is necessary to allow easy stacking of the cans in the baskets on the pallet. The reorientation operation is difficult due to the details that cannot be crushed by the gripper. Therefore, a special turntable with a gripper was designed, which allows the stack to be rotated without damaging the cans.
A 6-axis Kuka robot is used to stack cans in baskets on a pallet and to insert spacers between the layers. When one pallet is full, the robot automatically starts stacking cans on the second pallet. When one pallet is full, the robot automatically starts stacking cans on the second pallet. Thanks to the use of a 6-axis robot, it is also possible to stack cans on a pallet in the form of vertical stacks. The entire device can be adapted to the reverse function, i.e. to depalletizing cans from a pallet.
