Supply of a snoxStacker AGV to DEKKER’s Netherlands site

CUSTOMER PROBLEM

General

DEKKER is a major horticultural producer in the Netherlands. These products are placed in plastic boxes. Their production plant is fitted with a conveyor used to supply empty plastic boxes to people.
These plastic boxes must, therefore, positioned on pallets.

The goal of the installation for DEKKER

• Taking pallets full of empty plastic boxes to the storage area
• Automatically placing down on the supply conveyor.

DEKKER is seeking a solution that can perform ALL these operations automatically.

Specific project features

• Operation of equipment: 12 hours/day, 6 days/week, 52 weeks/year
• Picking up and putting down pallets automatically
• The pallet storage area is divided into 5 rows, 40 m long
• 5 pallet handling stations
• Dekker would like the pallets to be taken automatically from the most congested row, but with the option of switching rows or forcing a pickup from a specified row.
• 1 pallet pick-up every 3 minutes
• Max. load of 150 kg

SNOX SOLUTION

SNOX supplied DEKKER with an automatic stacker (snoxStacker) for this project. It is a commercial stacker modified by us for “transformation” into an AGV.

In order to do this, snox has added various features to the stacker
our control electronics,
a laser gyroscope for the guidance method,
sensors at the end of the forks for pallet detection,
various encoders for measuring the distance travelled by the AGV and the fork height of the sensors at the front and rear for staff safety.

The chosen guidance method is laser guidance via reflectors carefully positioned around the workshop. The AGV is controlled via a central computer which controls and modifies the various routes and calculates the position of the AGV within the workshop.

This solution is therefore ideal for picking up and setting down pallets automatically.

To control pick-up stations, the AGV records the distance travelled along each row before converting this distance into a pallet occupancy percentage in the rows so that it travels to the most congested row. The user can determine this value entirely via the central computer, forcing the AGV to travel to the specified storage row. Shifting between rows is also possible.

The presence or absence of a pallet, the difference in pallet height, etc. are registered by sensors at the end of the forks.

Once the pallet has been allocated to a storage row, it is automatically taken to the workshop feed conveyor and put down.

The AGV speed is fully adjustable and can be modified over time. This feature gives the customer the option to adapt the speed to his production.

You can also view the video of this project on the snox Stacker  page.

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