Methods and apparatuses for packaging glass articles

An apparatus that forms bundles of glass articles, the apparatus comprising:

• a glass article infeed station that provides glass articles to a conveying system, the conveying system transports individual glass articles to an insert building station, the conveying system comprising a continuous conveyor belt comprising sectioned article retaining regions that are each sized and configured to retain a single glass article spaced from adjacent glass articles in a conveying direction as the glass articles are transported to the insert building station;
• an insert feed station comprising a plurality of layer separation inserts, the conveying system transports the plurality of layer separation inserts to the insert building station;
• the conveying system is configured to individually locate the glass articles within article receiving slots of the plurality of layer separation inserts using the continuous conveyor belt, wherein each article receiving slot of the plurality of layer separation inserts sequentially receives a single glass article that is released from a respective sectioned article retaining region of the continuous conveyor belt forming a glass article layer of side-by-side glass articles;
• a bundle building station where the conveying system stacks multiple glass article layers including layer separation inserts forming a bundle, the layer separation inserts providing a barrier between adjacent glass articles of each of the glass article layers;
• a conveyor different from the continuous conveyor belt that moves each one of the plurality of layer separation inserts from the insert building station to the bundle building station once each one of the plurality of layer separation inserts is filled;
• and
• a robotic lift assembly that removes each one of the plurality of layer separation inserts with the glass articles from the conveyor and stacks the multiple glass article layers.

A method of forming a palletized package of bundles of glass articles, the method comprising:

• building multiple glass article layers using a conveying system by individually locating the glass articles sequentially within article receiving slots of multiple layer separation inserts using a continuous conveyor belt, the continuous conveyor belt comprising sectioned article retaining regions that are each sized and configured to retain a single glass article spaced from adjacent glass articles in a conveying direction as the glass articles are transported by the conveying system, wherein each article receiving slot of the layer separation inserts sequentially receives a single glass article that is released from a respective section article retaining region forming glass article layers of side-by-side glass articles;
• moving each layer separation insert with the glass articles from the insert building station to a bundle building station using a conveyor different from the continuous conveyor belt once each layer separation insert is filled;
• using a robotic lift assembly, removing each layer separation insert from the conveyor and stacking multiple glass article layers including layer separation inserts using the conveying system forming multiple bundles at the bundle building station, the layer separation inserts providing a barrier between adjacent glass articles of each of the glass article layers;
• and
• stacking the multiple bundles forming the palletized package.