NewswireToday - /newswire/ - Blacksburg, VA, United States, 04/29/2008 - ESS Technologies, Inc., designed a complete line for the high speed assembly and packaging of 45 diagnostic test kits per minute, incorporating product handling, pick-and-place, FANUC robots with vision, and packaging equipment.

To create the diagnostic test kits, the Medical Device Assembly system integrates bowl feeders with low profile flat belt conveyors, which deliver the cassette tops and bottoms to pick-and-place devices. A puck carrier moves the cassette top around the indexing machine. Automated reel feeders, cutters and vacuum pick-and-place devices place a piece of reactive membrane in the top cassette in the correct orientation. The bottom cassette piece is conveyed and picked in the same manner as the top cassette, and the two pieces are pressed together. The completed test kit is rotated 180° to allow a vision system to verify correct placement of the reactive membrane. Incorrect test kits are rejected prior to loading into trays using the TaskMate™ Robotic System.

Within the loading system, conveyors move empty trays in and full trays out. A FANUC LR Mate 100iC robot with a quick change ESS-designed end effecter removes completed test kits from the assembly machine and places them in a tray. As the assembled test kit moves to the packaging process, the full trays are unloaded using a second FANUC robot and TaskMate™ System, which is also integrated with conveyors for automated full-tray-infeed and empty-tray-discharge through the robotic loading cell. This second robotic loading system incorporates a Model 430iC which uses FANUC’s integrated vision and line tracking to pick assembled test kits from the tray and place them into a continuous motion flow wrapper infeed. The test kit is collated with a moisture-absorbing desiccant pack and pouched to complete the packaging process.

About ESS Technologies, Inc.

ESS Technologies, Inc. (esstechnologies.com), founded in 1993, specializes in complete packaging line design, manufacture, and integration. Our product expertise includes monoblock fillers/cappers, robotic palletizing systems, horizontal/vertical cartoners, horizontal/vertical case packers, tube fillers, overwrappers, custom designed solutions, and integrated robotics. Engineered for reliability and efficiency, ESS Technologies’ products offer you tomorrow’s packaging technology today.

Agency / Source: ESS Technologies, Inc.

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