In the end-of-line segment of automated production lines, palletizing is often the most labor-intensive process and the most likely to become a bottleneck. The design cycle time of a production line may be 1200 boxes/hour, but if the palletizing process cannot keep up, the overall line efficiency is dragged down. Choosing the right palletizing equipment is essentially choosing "who can steadily and consistently run the entire line's capacity to full over the long term."

Based on our project experience in lithium battery, 3C, home appliance, and pharmaceutical industries, we recommend focusing on the following 5 parameters during selection.

Load is the starting point for selection, but many projects only determine it based on the "currently heaviest box type," resulting in the inability to handle later product upgrades or heavier box types.

It is recommended to select based on 1.2 times the current maximum load. Taking common carton palletizing as an example, a single box of 25–50kg is the mainstream range; if drums, bags, or shrink-wrapped packages are involved, the load distribution will be more dispersed, and the gripping point and center of gravity need to be calculated separately. At the same time, confirm the compatibility between the end effector (gripper/vacuum suction cup/fork) and the box type—suction cups are suitable for cartons with flat surfaces, while grippers are suitable for irregular or easily deformable packaging.

The nominal cycle rate of the robot itself is often measured under ideal working conditions, while the actual production line must consider incoming material intervals, conveyor line buffering, and pallet switching time.

What really needs to be calculated is: palletizing cycle rate ≥ peak cycle rate of upstream incoming materials. If the incoming materials are uneven (for example, batch discharging from the previous process), a buffer conveyor section needs to be set up before palletizing to avoid frequent waiting or blockage of the robot.

Taking the common 8-hour three-shift system in the chemical and food industries as an example, for a production line with a daily output of 20,000 boxes, the stable cycle rate of the palletizing stage should be no less than 1000–1200 boxes/hour, with a 10–15% peak redundancy reserved.

Repeat positioning accuracy directly affects the neatness and stability of the stack pattern. Insufficient accuracy can cause box misalignment, stack tilting, and in extreme cases, stack collapse.

Currently, mainstream industrial robot palletizing solutions can achieve repeat positioning accuracy at the ±0.05mm level, which is sufficient to ensure alignment consistency between layers. It should be noted that this accuracy is an indicator under rated load and rated speed; if operated at full load and high speed for a long time, the actual accuracy will degrade. When selecting, you should confirm the "full life cycle accuracy retention" data provided by the manufacturer.

This is the parameter most easily overlooked but most affecting actual capacity.

When changing stack patterns on traditional palletizing lines, manual re-teaching and parameter adjustment are required, often taking more than 30 minutes. For production lines with many SKUs and small batches (such as 3C, pharmaceuticals, food), changing production 5–8 times a day means losing several hours of capacity each day.

It is recommended to choose a system that supports visual stack pattern editing and can automatically generate recommended stack patterns, keeping the deployment time for changeover stack patterns within 5 minutes. With parameterized templates, operators only need to input box dimensions and stack pattern rules, and the system can complete path planning without programming knowledge.

When selecting, ask three questions clearly:

The purchase price of palletizing equipment is only an explicit cost. What truly determines the return on investment is: production line utilization rate, changeover losses, downtime due to failures, and later modification costs.

It is recommended to involve the equipment supplier in the production line layout design at the early stage of the project, planning conveying, buffering, palletizing, and pallet supply as a whole, rather than "adding a robot" after the production line is built. This is also the reason we have always recommended the turnkey line model—from solution design, production and manufacturing to installation and commissioning, all handled by the same party, with clear responsibility boundaries, and cycle time interface issues resolved at the drawing stage.

Guangdong Hehongxin Intelligent Equipment Co., Ltd. focuses on intelligent warehousing, palletizing robots, conveying and sorting, and automated production lines, providing one-stop services from solution design, production and manufacturing, to installation and commissioning. Welcome to call for consultation on production line assessment and solution design.