Patent ID: 9126771
Filing Date: 2015-09-08
Classification: B31B,B65G,B65H

Abstract:
1. A method for transferring cutouts from a magazine formed from at least one vertical stack of cutouts made of sheets of cardboard or corrugated cardboard material including notches, comprising a plurality of cycles of transfer of cutout, each cycle comprising the steps of: illuminating a cutout on a top of the at least one vertical stack of cutouts in an angled manner in order to generate shadows produced by the notches and overlaps between one or more cutouts and disregarding the one or more cutouts which do not have a predetermined number of shadow zones as being below the cutout to seize; locating a cutout on the top of the stack by at least a digital camera located above the magazine by imaging the cutout on the top of the stack, and transmitting data obtained from the imaging to a computer, wherein the digital camera is centered with respect to the magazine; determining the cutout on the top of the stack from dimensions of the vertical stack of cutouts to be located in a pick-up plane and from an image obtained by the digital camera by computing a presence of four or more shadow zones and a distance between the zones and computing a barycenter and the angle of the cutout on the top of the stack in relation to a reference position; preliminarily detaching the cutout on the top of the stack from a rest of the vertical stack of cutouts, the preliminarily detaching being undertaken by lifting up one or several sides of the cutout on the top of the stack, grasping the cutout on the top of the stack by suction by communicating the computed barycenter and angle of the cutout on the top of the stack to a robotic arm which is provided with suction tooling, and by controlling the robotic arm in order to align the suction tooling with a lining-up of the cutout on the top of the stack before grasping it by suction by way of the tooling, displacing the cutout on the top of the stack by the robotic arm; and releasing said cutout on the top of the stack at a following station for or prior to forming a packaging box; and repeating the above cycle of steps at a rate of more than thirty cycles per minute, with successive cutouts regularly advanced at the top of the stack.