Handling syringes on a minimal footprint

The pharmaceutical industry sets high standards in respect of hygiene, quality and performance, and these standards apply to pharmaceutical packing facilities too. Space is also often at a premium in production plants, chiefly due to how they have grown historically, and new additions to the machinery stock must therefore be as compact as possible. Robotronic AG specialises in robot-aided handling systems that meet these strict size requirements. The Swiss company works with a modular robot cell developed in house, termed Modular Robot Technology or MRT for short. Only Mitsubishi Electric robots are used in this system.

Robotronic has developed a handling module for supplying ready-to-use syringes to the final packing facility of an international pharmaceutical company in Germany. The company, a longstanding customer of Robotronic, was urgently seeking a flexible solution that could be implemented in a maximum construction period of four to five months. The space available was extremely tight at roughly three square metres, and a supply rate of 400 syringes per minute was stipulated. The solution also had to permit switching between different syringe carriers and syringe formats ranging from 0.5 to 10 millilitres.

By applying the modular principle, Robotronic is able to combine any Mitsubishi Electric robots in a cell with other elements such as conveyor belts, camera systems or linear axes. Mike Weber, managing director of Robotronic AG, says: “We can save a lot of time in design and construction using the modular principle. The basic framework is always present and only has to be fitted out according to the requirements, which keeps procurement costs relatively low. The extremely compact design is an important advantage, enabling us to work in a very small space.” The basic module of the MRT occupies an area that is barely the size of a euro pallet, measuring 1.0 by 1.30 metres, and is around 2.20 metres tall.

More information:

https://eu3a.mitsubishielectric.com/fa/en/news/case_studies