Aug 19 2010 --- OCME S.r.l. from Parma Italy, a world leader in packaging, filling, handling and palletising systems for the consumer products industry, have announced that their range of palletising machines can now have layer forming systems that uses manipulators – designed to handle fragile products and multipacks.

The manipulators can infeed OCME's robotic Pegasus, high speed linear Orion and traditional Perseus line of Palletisers.  Dependant on line speed, up to six manipulators are used.

The OCME manipulators have self centring grippers for maximum precision in positioning packs and bundles of packs and perform three main functions:

*Pack Rotation
*Layer Forming
*Layer Compacting

The manipulators provide gentle handling of fragile and unstable packs (i.e. bundles with petaloid base bottles), even at high speeds.  Suitable for lightweight PET multipacks, Beer in lightweight glass, multipacks of cans and traditional glass packaging.

Key Features are:

Independently programmable with own PLC
No change parts required
Handles all pallet configurations including centre column
Reduced maintenance compared to traditional systems