Thinking inside the box

[cjsmith]

Amazon’s new(ish) automated boxing machines. 5 times faster than humans and can do 700 boxes/hr.

https://youtu.be/U1yw05mWnXw

(NB: since I saw this at work, I do not know whether it has sound or if so what the sound is like.)

Comments

[eichin]

I saw the article, if anything I'm surprised at amazon rolling them out this *late* (double checking https://www.cmcmachinery.com/our-history/ shows that this really is the fancy new 2014 version, but they've made this sort of thing for decades... and there were at least 3 companies with hardware at Promat 2017 that had custom-sized-box-on-demand hardware...)

It looks like the interesting part is that they're finally fixing the "you ordered 3 SD cards, here's a 2 cubic foot box" problem :-)

[cjsmith]

Nice! Yes, large boxes for tiny items is a nice thing to optimize out.

As for the timing, yeah, I'm always several years late to catch the interesting stuff. Nobody ever tells me anything. ;-)

[eichin]

Amazon *using* them was apparently just announced in a Reuters article 2 days ago https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-automation-exclusive-idUSKCN1SJ0X1 ... it's just a little odd that a 5 year old marketing video is all they had to work with.

(A lot of my home project organizing would be easier if I had an efficient custom-size box-printer, much more useful than a general 3d printer, but I'd want at least one side clear, and the industrial space is mostly all-cardboard...)

[cjsmith]

That thing does seem like quite the space hog.