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Independent cart technology uses individually controlled movers that transport products along a track, offering countless benefits over traditional gear, chain, and belt conveyance.
For starters, manufacturers can switch production with the press of a button. Object-oriented libraries allow standardization and fast implementation to preset motion profiles from the HMI, resulting in virtually zero downtime for machine format changes.
Unlike traditional conveyor technology, which has fixed space between products, independent cart technology is variable pitch. It can adjust the distance between products on the production line to align with the various product formats. This flexibility allows you to optimize production and increase your throughput for all the food and beverage items you package, in just one machine line.
DT Engineering, an industrial automation developer and system integrator, used independent cart technology in a new system to help meet one Fortune 500 customer’s OEE standard of 85%. The solution ended up exceeding the standard – achieving 97% OEE. Based on that success, DT Engineering developed the solution into a new product for a wide range of assembly, dispensing and packaging applications.
Intelligently spacing carts also helps with one of the biggest trouble spots in manufacturing: infeed. As one of the most complicated stages of packaging food, if an application has bottlenecks, it’s typically in the infeed stage. Independent cart technology can adjust the spacing between carts to prevent slowdowns at specific packaging stations and can combine continuous and clocked processes for infinite production.
