Soft products manipulation and control with air jets

The research detailed in this paper is aimed at developing an adaptive, low contact, high speed system for manipulating flexibly packaged snack foods such that an assembly process known as bandoleering may be automated. Bandoleers are used extensively as a sales presentation method for peanuts in the UK and crisps elsewhere in Europe. Bandoleer assembly is currently performed manually at a maximum rate of 20 assemblies per minute because no automation has been reliable or fast enough to date. Previous work has shown that automatic assembly can only be achieved if packages are accurately positioned. Current bagging technology does not allow the orientation of a product to be maintained direct from production, hence this system is required to receive randomly aligned flexibly packaged objects at a rate of 90 per minute and manipulate them to an accurate assembly position. Increasing the handling rates of objects in flexible wrappers has revealed several problems which are discussed here