Chocolate Bar Case Unloading Concept

Design engineers at CHL sometimes worked on quotations, and this was one of mine. A large confectionery manufacturer needed cases of chocolate bars unloaded at high volume, with the bars ending up in a single layer for the next process. I developed the technical solutions, and we presented four concepts. The customer liked this one but didn’t move forward, so it exists as a model and a short animation. I’m including it because it’s the most novel idea I’ve worked on.

The obvious approach is to open the case from the top and take the bars out. But bars packed upright in rows have to be removed one at a time, likely by a robot, and at these volumes that’s slow and expensive. So the question became whether the bars could come out as a group.

They can, if you turn the case over. The mechanism grips a full case, rotates it about 180 degrees, and holds it inverted over an inclined chute, where the bars can be released in a controlled sequence. We called it the push pop, after the candy. Nothing has to reach in and grab the product; gravity and geometry do the work, and the machine only controls the rate. A roller after the chute then spreads the bars into the single layer the customer required.

• Understanding the need: We knew the volume and the single layer requirement, but never why they needed the bars unloaded. Designing to a need you can only partly see is a real skill, and I wouldn’t claim we fully solved it.
• Fragile product: Testing with real bars showed how easily they break, which constrained every drop height and angle in the design.
• Animation: Making the SolidWorks animation clear was genuinely difficult, but it mattered. A customer choosing between four concepts is partly deciding on whether they can see how each one works.