The Italian bakery manufacturer met Gerhard Schubert at Ipack-Ima tradeshow three years ago when it was looking to produce pre-baked croissants for the restaurant trade.
160 croissants per minute
At the time, the company needed a system that could gently inject different fillings into the baked goods and combine this with the final packaging process.
“San Giorgio purchased three lines - two of which have started operation. The third line is scheduled for start-up early 2019,” Antonino Lanza, sales and project manager, Gerhard Schubert, told BakeryandSnacks.
The challenge was to integrate an injection station from machine manufacturer Canol into the system’s design. Lanza worked closely with Canol to come up with an injector that is precisely matched to Schubert’s robot-based technology.
The manufacturer was also impressed with the gentle, safe gripping technology and flexibility of Schubert machines to inject different fillings into the croissants as well as other baked goods.
San Giorgio Dolce & Salato can fill and package 160 croissants per minute and now plans to expand its range of pre-baked pastries.
Pick-and-place robots
Schubert developed four sub-machines, within that are three pick-and-place robots and two F2 robots for handling the croissants.
A 2D image recognition system first checks the position of the products and transmits the data to the F4 robots at the next station.
The picker arms grasp the croissants one at a time and places them on the Transmoduls in 12 rows with even spacing. These transport robots bring the croissants to the injection station, where a component fills them with jam, chocolate or vanilla cream.
A robot positions the croissants, and the component with 12 injection needles approaches and punctures the croissants. The needles are adjustable in height and can determine how deep they need to inject the filling into the baked goods.
Once the croissants have been filled, F2 robots place them in groups of 12 on the belt. Then they go through a froster.
In the final step, the deep-frozen products are packed in flow-wrap bags either individually or in packs of three, or in cartons at the next Schubert system.