Robots for sensitive vials

Vials undergo several handling steps in pharmaceutical production, not least due to the different cleanroom classes. Especially the The empty vials are usually fed into the washing or filling machine and the filled vials into the packaging machine manually. The reasons for this lie in the vials themselves: Made of thin glass, they are fragile. They are also small, with fill sizes of just a few millilitres. Another difficulty is that the vials are often transported internally in lockable Akylux boxes. In them they are positioned without order, which poses particular challenges in terms of automation technology.

The Goldfuß engineering GmbH has now solved this problem for vials with a filling size of 2 ml (2R) and above: In a compact handling cell, a robot takes over the opening of the Akylux box. It removes the vials and places them on a turntable or a bi-flow belt, from where they go into the washing, filling, inspection or packaging machine. The robot also places the empty box in a container for later disposal. The complete Process takes around 50 to 60 seconds. This time can be further reduced by using a second robot.