Flying motion and linear transport enable new material handling concepts for the distribution and fulfillment centers of tomorrow
As Industrie 4.0 takes hold of intralogistics, new material handling technologies are necessary to meet new demands. Increases in customization and lot-size-1 orders require flexible and greater traceability. Warehouses, DCs and fulfillment centers can benefit from XPlanar, the revolutionary flying motion solution for product and parcel handling, and the linear eXtended Transport System (XTS). In this educational presentation, originally presented at ProMat Digital Experience 2021, I discuss how to enable dynamic gapping and sortation as well as other material handling strategies with these technologies. You can explore how to increase accuracy and throughput while shrinking machine footprint.
With XPlanar, levitating movers with six degrees of motion and freedom in planar tile layouts allow engineers to design new concepts for product handling and transport. The floating effect replaces all mechanical guide components and drastically reduces cleaning and maintenance costs. The tiles can be covered with stainless steel, plastic, glass or other materials to meet unique production requirements. Automatic path planning with collision avoidance ensures that XPlanar movers fly from point A to point B in the fastest time possible, stopping at specific processing or inspection stations.
XTS is a high-performance linear track solution with movers that move individually or in groups, and it enables new designs that can cut machine footprints up to 50%. As such, XTS is ideal for gapping random product flow and many other intralogistics applications. While it is not designed to replace an entire conveying system, it has the capability with increased traceability from pick to ship. With impressive speed and acceleration, as well as programming in the TwinCAT 3 engineering environment, XPlanar and XTS enable both rapid product transport and engineering for diverse, smart material handling applications.
Ready to boost material handing capabilities in your intralogistics operation with XPlanar and XTS? Contact your local Beckhoff sales engineer today.
Jeff Johnson is the Mechatronics Product Manager for Beckhoff Automation LLC.