Edson Packaging Machinery, powered by Pro Mach, will introduce at Tissue World 2016, March 15-17 in New Orleans, the Raptor SL, a high performance automated case packing solution for small to mid-sized companies in the at-home and away-from-home tissue industry. This new machine enables tissue suppliers to boost production and support increased sales while lowering packaging line labor costs. 

The new Raptor SL is an all-in-one fully integrated side-load machine that erects, packs, and hot-melt seals up to 12 cases per minute of at-home and away-from-home bath tissue, paper towels, napkins, and facial tissue. The Raptor SL will feature ProTech by Pro Mach the new cloud-based remote tech support and machine monitoring capability that ensures peak performance and throughput.

“The Raptor SL allows small and medium sized suppliers in the at-home and the away-from-home tissue markets to affordably step up to higher output and productivity through integrated case erecting, packing, and sealing,” says Jeff Werner, vice president and general manager at Edson. “Some low-volume operations may be able to route two or even three lines into the Raptor SL for greater overall throughput with less labor. Tissue World 2016 attendees can see the Raptor SL in action and discuss with knowledgeable Edson personnel how this automated solution can support company growth and profitability.”

The Raptor SL lowers end of line labor costs by reducing both the number of workers and overall time associated with case packing. Loading knock-down flat (KDF) corrugated cases onto the infeed conveyor is fast and less labor intensive than many other automated case packers. With an optional extended infeed conveyor, more than a half-dozen skids containing KDFs may be staged. Based on the speed of production, the extended conveyor can potentially lead to hours of labor free loading. The Raptor SL automatically loads each new stack while continuing to run, promoting maximum uptime. Operators can easily select for KDF dunnage or zero dunnage loading from the infeed. This gives the operation flexibility in the use of KDFs.

Changeover between stock keeping units (SKUs) can be accomplished in as little as 15 minutes and does not require tools. Edson also offers an option based on servo technology that performs rapid, fully automatic changeover. This option was developed for packaging lines with numerous SKUs.

Operators can access vital machine functions and information from a touchscreen interface, including recipes for various SKUs, alarm settings, production data, and maintenance documentation – print, diagram, and video. The Raptor SL offers fully integrated safety motion control.

The security and redundancy engineered into the ProTech by Pro Mach cloud-based tech support and monitoring solution is comparable to that utilized by the world’s largest corporations. ProTech remote monitoring levels the playing field between small to medium sized companies and large ones in terms of providing organizations with the ability to optimize machine performance based on real time overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) data. ProTech reporting supports the continuous improvement and greater competitiveness of the packaging line. ProTech by Pro Mach’s tech support functionality reduces service time when a machine is down from days, in the case when a technician has to be dispatched to the packaging line, to a matter of hours or minutes through state-of-the-art remote diagnostics.