ACMI installed two glass lines at the F.lli Martini Secondo Luigi di Cossano Belbo winery, in the province of Cuneo, to bottle the precious wine of the Langhe. The rather complex project involved the construction of a new production area of approximately 5,000 square metres to accommodate the two lines of 36,000 and 15,000 bottles per hour.

Depalletiser

Both lines are equipped with the same depalletiser model, the Faster D200 with high level outfeed. The two machines, which are located in an area separated from the rest of the line due to internal logistics requirements, were positioned side by side in order to be managed by a single operator. The fastest line, the 36,000 bottle per hour line, manages only one 0.75 litre bottle format, while the 15,000 bph line is equipped to handle five different formats, from 0.2 litres to two litres.

Bottle conveyors

All the conveyor belts, bottle and carton, are equipped with low-consumption motors, while the bottle conveyor belts that connect the depalletisation area to the packaging area, passing through the filling and capping block, were designed by ACMI using specific devices to reduce the noise levels, typical of a glass line, and at the same time guarantee the least possible rubbing of the bottles while preserving their aesthetic appearance.

Since it is a depalletiser with a high level outfeed, a necessary choice to support depalletisation speeds of around 40,000 pieces per hour, ACMI had to design the section of bottle conveyor belts that leads to the filling with an inclination that ensures absolute stability of the bottles in transit from the depalletiser outfeed level to the filler level.

Accumulation table

Downstream of the filler, ACMI installed on each line a special dynamic accumulation table for glass bottles that reduces the rubbing of the bottles both during accumulation and during unloading. Continuing with the project description, the fastest line sees the use of two wrap-around carton packers, while the 15,000 bph line is served by a single machine.

Palletiser

Each line ends with an ACMI Condor P136 model robotic palletiser equipped with the Twisterbox layer formation system. It is a palletising system particularly suitable for wine lines as it guarantees great flexibility and extreme delicacy in treating the product.

The Twisterbox layer formation system, in the case in question configured with two gripping modules, allows the manipulation of any type of product with precision, speed and delicacy, so much so that it is possible to avoid even the use of the so-called separators in the packages. This configuration, but not the case in question, is also suitable for “multiliner” palletisation when the palletising system is placed at the confluence, for example, of two or more different production lines.

The Condor robot combined with the Twisterbox is equipped with an “bomb bay door” openable platform gripping head with carbon rollers and a concentric opening system that guarantees the perfect deposit of the layers on the pallet. The supply concludes with two rotating ring pallet stretch wrappers, one per line, and a series of wire-guided shuttles and roller conveyor belts that allow the quick storage of the finished pallets in the automatic store adjacent to the two production lines.