Slowly, the truck with the still empty loading area stops under the Beumer autopac. To load and palletize the cement bags, the employee enters the number of bags, the packing pattern and the desired number of rows and layers on the control panel, the Beumer Group Human Machine Interface (HMI). Laser positioning aids are fitted to the left and right of the Beumer autopac. These clearly project the outer contours of the machine onto the loading area with a red beam, helping the operator to position the machine head on the truck.

The Beumer autopac now begins automatic loading from the starting position, bag by bag directly from the packing machine via the conveyor belts onto the truck. §With our Beumer autopac, we have a machine in our range that loads trucks fully automatically," explains Markus Peitzmeier, Senior Sales Manager at the Beumer Group. And it does so extremely reliably. We use electronic bag counting to ensure that the loading capacity of the truck is neither exceeded nor fallen short of. Manual corrections are completely eliminated. "The program control recalculates the height setting for each layer," explains Peitzmeier. In order to achieve a high level of stability for the entire load on the truck and to make optimum use of the loading area, two layers are palletized next to each other in mirror image. Two belt conveyors, one above the other, iron the bags before the loading process and thus de-aerate them. After depositing, the loading head also presses them down, which makes the stacks more compact and therefore more stable. At the same time, the next layer is already being prepared. The bag feed sections can be adapted to the customer's installation conditions. Appropriate technical solutions for variable conveyor sections are available.

"Among other things, the Beumer autopac is very well suited for use in emerging markets, where the handling of bagged bulk goods is increasing. Labor costs are also rising there, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to find suitable personnel for this work," explains Peitzmeier. This is because manual truck loading is strenuous and usually requires two people who alternate with their colleagues for each truck load due to the heavy physical work involved. Added to this is the high level of dust generation, which has a negative impact on employees' health. During manual loading, the loading performance and the quality of the bag stacks often fluctuate. "These problems are eliminated with our autopac. Physical labor is a thing of the past," says Peitzmeier. "One employee can operate several machines at once." Operators can thus optimize work processes, achieve high loading capacities and work extremely efficiently from bagging to loading.

Depending on the bag dimensions and their length and width ratio, the user is flexible in the layer formation to be carried out. Bags can be formed in bundles of ten, twelve and 20 bags per layer. The low placement height of the autopac loading head also contributes to the gentle handling of the bags, as they are supported during the loading process and not lifted or possibly deformed, as is the case with vacuum suction modules.