UPMC has been in the packaging business, offering services for various household names in the food industry. To keep up with the intense competition in manufacturing and packaging, the company has to maximize its production capacity and cut up on other possible costs.
The manual labeling of the cups of the company\u27s particular product became a concern due to the delay it causes brought about by the varying speeds of the workers in the production line. This led the group to design and fabricate a machine that can automatically affix the labels to the cup. It is aimed to apply the adhesive around the cup and the label attached in a sequential fashion.
The vast capacity of the PLC was utilized to achieve the objective. The PLC controlled the operation sequence of the machine. The Ladder Diagram served as our communication tool to encode the program into the PLC. It is further supported by the careful selection of the mechanical parts of the machine. AutoCAD helped us in this selection and design process and the CNC machine was of great help in fabricating some of the complex parts of the machine. To further explore the capability of the machine, we subjected the machine to experiments to determine the best adhesive, correct lift assembly height, label arm orientation and design, and labeling time. All the results of the experiments were taken into consideration in the final design of the Automatic Labeling Machine.
The Automatic Plastic Cup Labeling Machine was able to deliver the task of automatically attaching the label to the cup. And importantly, it reduced the time from 9 seconds to 6 seconds. It has cut the labeling time by 34%. The machine will help cut up costs for the company and ensure delivery of goods considering the constant rate of labeling and production