A customer had previously sought out Filamatic with their new application. They wanted to accurately sort, feed, and label a tall unstable test tube on their double- index Monobloc liquid filling system. This liquid filling machine was to fill, cap, and label two different container sizes at a speed of 60 containers per minute.
Solution:
After testing out a few ideas, the technical service team came up with a solution. The sorting and feeding processes would require two sorting bowls with discharge conveyors. Each discharge conveyor would feed the oriented tubes (bottom leading) to a vertical drop chute and escapement mechanism. The tubes would then be loaded into the pockets of the Monobloc’s indexing turret.
After the filling & capping functions were completed, the tubes would then be labeled. Since the tubes were unstable, labels would be applied on a “trunnion roller” labeling system. A two-axis robotic pick ‘n place device would remove two filled tubes from the turret, rotate the pair of tubes from a vertical to horizontal plane, and place them onto the trunnion roller infeed conveyor of the labeler.
To help you better understand how this process works, here is some background information:
This technique places the empty containers below the fill nozzles by the indexer. The nozzles are held in a stationary position just over the openings of the container while the product is dispensed from the filling units. During the capping process, the containers are transferred to the feed system where the turret places the caps onto the bottles and turns the caps so that the thread of the cap is joined with the thread of the bottle’s neck.
After being filled and capped, the unstable test tubes are transferred to the labeling area where they are horizontally positioned. The labeling technique allows the filled and capped tubes to be transferred to the labeling next machine horizontally positioned that they can be labeled with ease.
