Ergosa A Vs. Ergosa C: Which Is Better For Your Production? [+ VIDEO]
👉 You’re considering an Ergosa to boost your folder-gluer’s productivity, but you’re not sure which Ergosa packer is best for you.
8 min read
Stefan Badertscher : March 9, 2021
With the growing complexity of the cardboard packaging market, the demand for custom-tailored boxes is increasing at a monstrous rate.
This requires not only ever more flexible folder-gluers but also more flexible packers that can adapt to those folder-gluers.
As a result, fully automatic packers cannot be considered due to their strict requirements and lack of flexibility for boxes that come in diverse shapes, sizes and formats.
It is, therefore, necessary to turn to more versatile packers that allow for product variation, regular adjustments and consistent corrections to meet the ever-evolving needs of the market.
“But what are those versatile packers and how do they work?”
“Do they offer the same advantages as fully automatic packers?”
👉 The honest answer is that it all depends on the folder-gluer packer in question.
Hi! Hani Hallal here from Impack packaging. As a Marketing Manager at Impack, I work with the Sales team on the daily. Our top sold folder-gluer packer, and our clients' favorite, is the Ergosa Packer.
This video & article talks about Impack's Ergosa packer: What it is, what benefits it has to offer and how to decide if it’s right for your company.
The Ergosa is a semi-automatic folder-gluer packer that optimizes the efficiency of your case packing process and maximizes your folder-gluer’s productivity.
A packer is one of the 4 main folder-gluer packaging equipment and peripheral solutions that can be added to a folder-gluer line.
A packer uses a modernized packing solution that allows you to dramatically improve the efficiency, ergonomy and productivity of how you pack your boxes into cases by offering you automated case management capabilities.
A packer is installed behind, or at the end of a folder-gluer, and after the pre-packing equipment.
In other words, a packer is installed at the end of the flow of the packaging equipment as shown in the image below.
A packer allows you to:
An Ergosa packer’s level of automation can range from a manual process to a semi-automated process.
More often than not, the Ergosa packers we produce include case management which makes them semi-automatic.
Hence the name, Ergosa: Ergo-nomic, semi-automatic.
Case management being included means that you have an automatic case ejection system, a manual or automatic flap folding system, pneumatic tilting tables and flap folding units. In other words, your cases are managed automatically.
Having your cases managed automatically means that your packing person(s) can focus on the packing and no longer has to perform the case flap closing, taping and ejecting as those actions are now all automated.
And what makes a packer, a packer is the automated case management capabilities that they offer.
Additional options and modes can be added to the Ergosa packer that allow you to increase your packing process’ level of automation.
The article “What’s the Difference between Manual, Semi-Auto, Auto and Fully-Auto Folder-Gluer Packers?” provides an in-depth explanation of the different levels of automation that folder-gluer packers can offer.
🔍 Related: What is the Ergosa’s Case Management System & How Does It Work?
It is important for you to know that there are 2 different versions of the Ergosa within IMPACK’s Ergosa series: The Ergosa A and the Ergosa C.
The “Ergosa A” is a simple, economical and compact semi-automatic packer that offers a great improvement in terms of ergonomics and packing speed.
Simple in that it is designed so that anyone who knows how to operate a folder-gluer can quickly learn how to operate, and maintain, the Ergosa packer.
Economical in that it is much cheaper than most auto and fully auto packers on the market whilst being capable of achieving the same performance as that of auto packers.
Compact in that it adapts to any tight space.
The Ergosa A packer includes an IN2 box turner and offers two packing modes: The “Horizontal Mode” and the “Pick & Place (or Manual) Mode.”
Its ergonomic design and specific packing methodology allows boxes to be slid into the case without being lifted, hence reducing repetitive strain injury (RSI).
It is compatible with folding cartons and corrugated boards and handles various small to medium-sized boxes including straight-lines, 4-corners and 6-corners with multi-row, multi-layer packing capabilities. That said, processing 4-corners and 6-corners is only fast and ergonomic when run on an Ergosa C packer in Vertical Mode.
The Ergosa A packer is also capable of processing crash-lock/auto-bottom boxes but not as fast or as ergonomic as if you were to run them on the Ergosa C with an MFA Batch Inverting Module.
The Ergosa A’s setup time is close to zero (<5 minutes) and it is also compatible with all folder-gluer models.
The “Ergosa C” is a high-performance and versatile packer with the perfect combination between a semi-automatic packer and an automatic packer. That is, the Ergosa C is a semi-automatic packer with the performance of an automatic packer.
Its versatility and modularity make it IMPACK’s most sold folder-gluer packer over the last few decades.
The Ergosa C packer is compatible with folding carton and corrugated board boxes and includes all the features and benefits that an Ergosa A offers plus 5 additional features:
+ It offers one additional packing mode (Making a total of 3 main packing modes: Horizontal Mode, Pick & Place/Manual Mode and an optional Vertical Mode).
+ It packs 4-corners and 6-corners faster and more ergonomically than the Ergosa A.
+ It packs crash-lock/auto-bottom boxes faster and more ergonomically than an Ergosa A when combined with the MFA Batch Inverting Module.
+ It offers the possibility to pack big format boxes.
In other words, the Ergosa C packer is the more advanced and versatile version of the Ergosa series that offers all 3 packing modes and several additional features and benefits.
Interested in learning more about the Ergosa C’s 3 modes? We’ve got you covered! We wrote an article breaking down the Ergosa C’s 3 Main Modes, how they work and the benefits that they can provide to your packing process!
An Ergosa A packer is the better choice for you if you want to dramatically improve the efficiency, ergonomy and productivity of your packing process by having the ability to move a full row of boxes, in one single motion, and leveraging automated case management capabilities. But, you have limited space available and do not need high-speed output for 4-corner, 6-corner or crash-lock/auto-bottom boxes.
An Ergosa C packer is the better choice for you if, again, you want to dramatically improve the efficiency, ergonomy and productivity of your packing process by having the ability to move a full row of boxes, in one single motion, and leveraging automated case management capabilities
+ You want to increase your packing speed per packing person for various types of boxes i.e. straight-lines, 4-corners, 6-corners and crash-lock/auto-bottom boxes.
And(or) you produce large volumes of crash-lock/auto-bottom boxes (40-50 Million per year) or big formats.
An Ergosa (both Ergosa A & C) is not the right fit for you if you have small production runs of various, different box formats (5,000-10,000 boxes).
In this specific situation, a Collecting Table like IMPACK’s “Packing Help Station” or the other Collecting Tables on the market would be a much better choice. Some examples of the most popular Collecting Tables in western countries are Bobst’s Handypack GT, KBA Duran's Omega Pack Station and Tünkers' FAS 480.
Or you produce a large number of straight-line boxes with the same format per production run (several hundreds of thousands to millions) and your goal is to achieve the highest running speed available on the market.
In this case, an automatic packer like our Virtuo packer would be a better option if your production is one-row, one-layer packing.
And an Ergosa packer is not the best fit for you if you are exclusively doing banding/strapping.
This is because you would need a stacker such as IMPACK’s Everio stacker, or the many other stackers on the market, for the banding/strapping process.
Although we have developed a module on our Ergosa packer inspired by our PerPack Module that allows you to push batches of boxes into a banding/strapping machine so that they can be bundled together, the Ergosa packer is originally designed to pack boxes into cases and not to stack boxes for bundling needs.
Instead, an Everio stacker would be a better choice for banding/strapping.
Now if you are alternating between case packing and banding/strapping on the same folder-gluer, then the Ergosa could be a perfect fit. Otherwise, a custom project could be considered (especially if you have large production volumes).
Do you have more questions about the Ergosa packer and how it can improve your case packing process?
Or prefer to talk to an expert and get to see the Ergosa LIVE in action?
We’re here to help! 📞 Give us a call today and we'll offer you a free productivity analysis to help you discover how you can boost your folder-gluer productivity 📈.
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