High Point, North Carolina based Packrite, LLC announced an upgrade to their Bobst Mastercut 2.1 diecutter line with the addition of a high-speed Bobst Breaker Flat Track nicked bundle breaker and a Bobst Pallitizer 2.1. This latest technology is part of Packrite’s improvement program and helps brings a new level of automation, productivity, and efficiency to their Mastercut line. “It’s a huge time saver,” says Michael Drummond, CEO of Packrite. “It has completely eliminated hand breaking on that Mastercut line. We can make multiple breaks across a bundle as well as multiple breaks in the through direction in a single pass. It’s all automatic and there’s no need for a second pass.”
The Breaker Flat Track feeds into the Palletizer 2.1, a fully automated palletizer which includes offsetting alignment and turntables to align and orient individual batches for proper placement within the stack. “These offsetting tables also allow our operators and quality team access to the full die-cut batch without climbing over the equipment. It makes it easier, faster, and safer to pull samples for quality control,” says Drummond.
The Palletizer 2.1 also includes automatic tie-sheet, dunnage-sheet, and pallet insertion in addition to automatic pallet pre-load placement. “We just select a load format and size from a pre-programmed recipe. Then it’s hands off, the machine does the rest.”
The Palletizer feeds into the recently installed state-ofthe- art takeaway conveyor line. “Our new takeaway line includes automatic pallet centering and a multi-head Signode GCU SmartFlex Unitizer with sword insertion feature. The sword insertion allows us to strap a load to a pallet in two directions to ensure load stability.”
Downstream from the unitizer is a new Octopus highspeed, large format automatic stretch wrapper. The system gives Packrite the versatility to strap and wrap, just strap, just wrap, or pass through based on their customers’ requirements and can create over 200 units per hour.
