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Avercon’s largest high-tech packaging line for parquet (almost 1,5 football field).
To increase the throughput while maintaining high quality standards, Avercon built a packaging line for one of the leading manufacturers of veneer parquet in Belgium. Apart from mixing and inspecting the planks, one of the key features is that the line can easily be adapted to various product sizes. Flexibility in automation makes this line futureproof. With a total length of 140 meter, it’s one of the biggest production lines Avercon ever built.
One of the challenges in the parquet industry, when planks are being cut from larger panels, is to mix and to inspect the planks. Good mixing of wooden planks is desirable to make sure that end users get a nice and diverse pattern in their floors, with random variations in colors and wood textures. In production, veneer planks also have to be inspected for knots, cracks and other defects that are inherent to using a natural material but should not end up in a high quality flooring product. A good inspection eliminates any planks with defects while production can continue at pace.
The new line designed and built by Avercon provides this automated mixing and inspection zone to get the planks 100% ready for packaging in carton boxes and palletizing. The main goal of the line is to speed up the process that was previously done manually to increase the overall production output.
46.000m²/week
More than 10 different product sizes.
Exceptional variation from Medium up to XL products.
Manufacturing capacity up to 46.000m2/ week
Floor planks, composed with or without cork layer, enter the line after the milling process where they get stacked to be transported to a robot that neatly aligns and singulates them. The robot places the planks on a conveyor at fixed distances so they can be flipped over by a star turner further down the line to put the decoration side on top, ready to be inspected.
An innovative system splits the stream to slow it down for profound inspection. Operators can indicate which planks they want to get ejected and reworked planks get added back in to the stream of high quality products.
Another robot is used to form several stacks on a wide conveyor belt – a process that mixes the planks to create a random sequence of wood structures. At the end of the line carton trays are formed to automatically package each of the stacks, after which the trays are transported to a palletizer. All end of line features are incorporated. “MIX wooden planks automatically to get the best natural look for your parquet.”
A unique feature of the line is that it can adapt to various product sizes, in length, weight and thickness of the planks. Most changes are done electronically via the user interface, with robots and other handling systems automatically adapting to the desired size. Adapting the machine takes as little time as possible, to create a maximal output. A futureproof machine solution is created: the client is not tied to one product size with this production line but can respond to various product sizes in the future depending on market demand.
Another feature of this packaging line is the attention that has been given in the design phase to asset management which has led to a high degree of standardization. By reducing the variety of components and the number of suppliers, a high degree of uptime can be guaranteed with a limited stock in spare parts. The design facilitates easy and ergonomic access to crucial parts of the line and guarantees easy serviceability.
High throughput and high quality are some of the typical hallmarks of Avercon. The high quality is a result of maximizing the performance of the automated mixing and inspection process. The high throughput is a result of our years of expertise in industrial automation. These features have been applied here on a very large scale for the flooring market.