Recipes

A recipe is one product on one kind of pallet. Changing product means changing recipe, and it is the only thing an operator picks before starting.

What a recipe holds

• The part: its dimensions and its mass.
• The container: which pallet it stacks on.
• The pattern: how parts sit in a layer, and how layers stack.
• The trajectories: how the robot gets from the pick to each drop.

Dispositions

The disposition is the arrangement of parts in a layer. Stackmill can generate it: give it the part and the pallet and it produces the arrangements that fit, ordered by how well they use the surface.

Generated dispositions are a starting point, not a verdict. The software optimises area; it does not know that your boxes have a printed face that must point outwards, or that the film wrapper needs a margin.

Different shapes are handled differently — rectangular parts, cylinders, bottles and bundles each have their own way of tiling a layer.

Layers and patterns

A stack is layers, and consecutive layers usually differ: rotating alternate layers is what keeps a pallet stable. The recipe holds the whole sequence, so a pallet is not simply the same layer repeated.

Trajectories

For every drop the robot needs a route: an approach, the placement, a retreat. These are generated with the disposition and checked against the scene, so a pattern that cannot be built without hitting the stack is reported rather than exported.