Automatically bundle products with rubber bands

The manual spreading of rubber rings is time-consuming and can lead to carpal tunnel syndrome for the operators. With very strong rubber bands, manual spreading is not possible at all. For this reason, there is a great need for an automated application of rubber bands.

Semi-automated solutions are available relatively inexpensively. However, they presuppose that a single rubber ring is placed manually on the spreader fingers. The rubber ring is then stretched mechanically or pneumatically. When the product is inserted, a sensor is activated that closes the spreader fingers. When removing the product, the rubber ring is simply slipped off the fingers.

Fully automatic solutions are technically much more complex. In practice, the challenge is to feed a single rubber ring to a spreading device at exactly the right time and position so that it can be automatically expanded. A single ring cannot be automatically removed from a loose quantity of rubber rings. In practice, therefore, a rubber ring is freshly cut to length from the tube for each application. Such fully automatic machines are considerably more expensive and are only economical with a high throughput. The asparagus packaging is an example. As a bunch of asparagus has to be bundled at both ends, 2 automatic bundling machines are arranged opposite each other. The bundles are fed horizontally past the applicators every second.