FUCHS

FUCHS Lubricants (UK) plc is the world’s largest independent lubricant manufacturer, supplying superior products and services to many diverse market sectors. At FUCHS, experienced technical and support teams provide specialist knowledge across a wide range of industries, from the mass automotive and industrial sectors to the specialised food grade and pharmaceutical lubricants market.

FUCHS offers assistance with lubricant best practice training, waste management, plant surveys and stock management.

To accompany their high-performance lubricants, they provide expert services ranging from a UK based technical help line to complete customer site based chemical process management packages.

Their UK manufacturing site is audited to the highest levels and has been awarded a wide range of quality standards. RMGroup were pleased to take on a project with a company with this reputation. FUCHS is dedicated to sustainable manufacturing and environmental awareness. They have invested in solar panels across their Stoke-on-Trent site which are expected to generate over 380,000kWh of clean, renewable energy per year with a reduction in carbon emissions of 4,008 tonnes over 20 years. This should generate over 12% of the required energy for their manufacturing plant.

As a major producer of lubricants and industrial fluids, they are fully committed to producing high quality products whilst striving to reduce their environmental impact in purchasing, manufacturing, distribution, waste generation, energy consumption and disposal.

The project brief was to provide a palletising solution that can handle both drums of oil and FUCHS’s environmentally friendly 25Kg ‘Lube Cube’ box concept, without any need to change the gripper head. RMGroup Engineers have many years of experience and knowledge within the robotics industry and accepted the challenge.

An ABB IRB 660 robotic arm was selected due to the reach, weight and speed characteristics of the robot. This coupled with a bespoke servo controlled gripper head ensured all payloads were palletised carefully and accurately with no damage to the product.

The installation was located between two production lines which allowed simultaneous palletising of two individual products. Once the product from either line reached the pickup conveyors the robot would quickly palletise to the correct pallet and await the next product.

The programming software utilises RMGroup’s bespoke Easy Teach function. Therefore, any discrepancies in palletising positions could be amended seamlessly without need for specialist programming knowledge.