A full palletisation

The whole job, once: from an empty project to a program a robot runs.

What we are building

One product, one pallet, one robot. A cell that picks boxes from a fixed position and stacks them until the pallet is full.

The scene

Add the robot and place it where it really is. Add a reference for the pallet station and place that. Everything else hangs off those two.

Model what the robot could hit — the fence, the conveyor, the cabinet — as volumes with collision on. It costs minutes now and saves a crash later.

The tool

Add the tool and mount it on the robot. Measure the TCP rather than estimating it, and enter the payload.

The container

Add the container under the station's reference, with the pallet's real dimensions. Add the pick position where boxes arrive.

The recipe

Create a palletising program and a recipe in it. Enter the part: its dimensions and its mass.

The disposition

Let Stackmill generate the layer arrangements, then choose. It orders them by how well they use the pallet; you choose on everything it cannot know — which face must point out, what the wrapper needs, how the boxes actually behave.

Set how layers alternate. Rotating alternate layers is what keeps a stack standing.

The trajectory

Generate the trajectories. Each drop gets an approach, a placement and a retreat, checked against the scene. Anything that cannot be reached, or cannot be reached without a collision, is reported here — before the robot ever moves.

Simulating

Run it. Watch the whole pallet build, and watch the last box of a layer as closely as the first: the corners are where reach and collision problems live.

Exporting

Export to the robot. Stackmill writes the program and the register map.

Running it

Set up the cell, take it live, and run the first pallet slowly — see Speed. Then hand Operating a cell to whoever will run it.