Cama Group and the Break-Though Generation Machines at Anuga Food Tec 2015

Cama Group is known globally for the cutting edge technology and the reliability of its packaging systems. The packaging machines and the robotized lines, designed, manufactured and installed by the Italian company worldwide, can be used in food and non-food industry and cover the whole primary and secondary packaging processes, from the line entrance to the end-of-line packaging operations, before palletising.

The Italian Company is renowned for the Lean Design of its secondary packaging machines and robots. Cama engineers have been designing TPM compliant machinery for over 10 years. Operator safety is their primary consideration in designing machinery, with Accessibility and enhanced Sanitation procedures very important in own design criteria.

Besides that, an extensive preventive maintenance program helped in making Cama equipments synonym of efficiency and reliability. “This is not enough, if you want to be a leader you cannot enjoy your position, you have to go for a new challenge”, Daniele Bellante, Cama Managing Director, stated. That’s why Cama is now ready to take a breakthrough in the packaging business, proposing a new philosophy to conceive robots and machines, approaching the 6 Sigma philosophy. The Company invests every year at least 5% of its turnover in Research and Development, but it’s also open to cooperation in order to take advantage of important synergies, such as the close relationship with the Politecnico of Milan, the best Italian engineering University, or business partnerships with specialised and selected suppliers. “We invest a lot in R&D, but this is not enough: our core business is packaging machines & robots and we are very good in that, but if we want to excel and be able to go over the edge, we must mix our know-how with others expertise.” Riccardo Panepinto, Cama Operations Director, asserts.“Packaging Machines are just commodities, the Service is what makes the difference. Machines must be integrated in the End Users production chain.” This was the mantra that inspired the design of the Cama Break-Through Generation.

The Break-Through Generation Machinery that Cama will exhibit at Anuga Food Tec will include both cartoning and top load robotics. Such machinery is the result of a restyling that Cama Group recently started to reduce further its machines footprint, by integrating the electrical and pneumatic components control cabinets into the machine pedestals angles. Such a most compact machine footprint helps to minimize cabling and makes it easier to place the utility devices right where they are needed and accessible.

Cama is now introducing the CL 175, a new cartoning machine, which has been completely redesigned, both in layout and functioning. Cama’s new side loading cartoner offers maximum flexibility with minimal changeover. Going into details, the CL 175 consists of three main operating stations: in the first one, the carton box is picked from the storage station, opened and placed into the movers’ pockets. After that, it moves to the next station for the product insertion. Two boxes at a time are picked and placed in continuous motion, with movers adapting their speed to the rotary feeder’s one. The boxes remain instead in a stand-by position to receive the items. As this step is completed, the carton boxes are moved towards the final closure station, which can work in continuous or intermittent mode. "The movers are electronically aligned with the devices operating in the different stations; they move independently of each other and adapt to different speed requirements”, Panepinto, Operations Director at Cama Group, points out.

On the robotics side, Cama will show the IG270, a new state of the art loading unit, equipped with 12 Delta type robots, working together in a compact framework according to a patented highly sophisticated Co-Flow loading principle. Another key-feature of the Cama proposal is the reduced footprint of such highly efficient and reliable line, which can allocate 12 Delta robots in just 5 mt. length, thanks to the patented anti-collision software, which enables the robots to work very close to each other, sharing the same picking area without interfering.