CODI Manufacturing Introduces a New Machine Designed and Built in Four Weeks

LITTLETON, Colo., and ISLANDIA, N.Y. - Nov. 4, 2024 - CODI Manufacturing introduced a compact, flexible 12-cycle-per-minute case packer for small to mid-sized food and beverage companies that achieves an industry leading price/performance ratio.

CODI Manufacturing utilized the Festo Handling Guide Online (HGO) engineering tool to design the two-axis handling system, the core of the new machine’s package handling. By having Festo assemble and ship a bolt-in-ready handling system, the company was able to build and commission the new machine in just four weeks.
“This machine is incredibly flexible,” said Jared Jones, Chief Operating Officer, CODI Manufacturing. “All the end user has to do is swap out the gripper head to change the number, type and size of bottles, cans, jars or pouches being packed into shipping cases, select a new recipe on the HMI and start the machine.”

The CODI design features:

• Festo’s new multiprotocol CMMT-AS servo drives and matching EMMT-ST one-cable motors

• New CPX-AP-A configurable remote I/O terminal

• New VTUX valve terminal

• A simplified motion series (SMS) low-cost electric-linear actuator

• The CDPX IP67 machine mounted HMI

• Festo robust linear axes

• The Festo CPX-CEC controller with EtherCAT communications for advanced motion control.

Collaboratively, Festo Engineering and CODI developed a pneumatic gripping head that provides feedback on successful gripping of each bottle. “Customers are amazed at the advanced motion automation technology on this machine for the price point,” Jones said. “It’s striking how much state-of-the-art automation is packed into such a small footprint machine."

CODI Manufacturing had wanted to build a compact case packer for small to mid-sized companies for several years. Recently, CODI was four weeks into an eight-week project when Jones and the customer discussed adding a case packer to the order. “When I mentioned a price, the customer said he’d buy the machine if we could deliver it in four weeks with the rest of his order,” recalled Jones. “I said we’d try.”

The core of the machine would be a two-axis handling system used to grip and lift six bottles off one conveyor and place them into a box on an adjacent conveyor. The CODI team used the Festo HGO engineering tool to specify the system where the axes, servos, motors, mounting plates and accessories were all properly sized and interoperable. The design session took minutes, saving CODI several days of engineering time.

“One of my lead controls engineers came into my office and said that Festo would supply a bolt-in-ready handling system at basically the same cost as buying and assembling the pieces and parts,” Jones said. “There was simply so little price difference between assembled and unassembled that we went with assembled. We used CAD files from the HGO session to build the frame while we waited for the assembly.

Three weeks later, the system arrived. We used eight bolts to attach it to the machine frame. For a multiple-axis system, this was the easiest and fastest assembly and commissioning we’d ever had and the lowest total cost.”