As a manufacturer of inline capper and chuck cappers we have dealt with thousands of different bottles and caps and the reality is that capping is one the hardest part of of the bottling process.
The main factors to take into consideration for better bottle capping results are:
VIDEO INLINE
For speeds above 200 bpm it’s the only effective solution
VIDEO CHUCK
Keep in mind each bottle and cap needs to be looked into, studied and tested to make sure it will work properly for your required speed, torque and consistency.
In the packaging business, specifically about bottle inline process (filling, capping, bottle handling), it is important that the machines be designed under fast, tool less, handy and easy concepts in order to get more profibility of invesment.
Talking about capping process, Acasi Machinery has developed an inline capper machine, model trucap. This machine can be a simple tightener machine, or of course, you can get a complete automation system add a cap chute and a cap feeder, depending on the size of cap and bottle geometry.
In a world where time is money, it is necessary to have a machine with tool less, easy, handy and fast changing over and adjusting concept, depending on whether you need to replace wear parts or need to adjust to a disk or belt parameters with the machine running. That's why Trucap capper machine by Acasi Machinery has a Value Added.
We are going to talk first, about replace process on parts susceptable to wear. At this point, it is important that you are able to change a spare part in a minimun time and minimum simple hand adjusments in order to reduce a machine stop time. Please take a look at the pictures on the bottom where I pretend to show a sequence of steps to uninstall a disk assembly:
After many hours of operation, the orange disk on a spindle capping systems are susceptible to wear. Therefore, eventually you will need to replace these orange disks. Just removing a pin, you can uninstall a complete capping disk or spindle assembly.
On the other hand, it is very common that you will need to change the physical values set on your capper machine depending on certain cap geometry or even depending on different bottles diameters. If you need to switch to different cap or bottle, could be a high undesired wasted of time, if you do not have the right machine. Please take a look at a short video clicking this link.
Trucap capper machine has an easy and handy solution, by using front knobs with position indicator for easy setup, to adjust the height and width of the gripper belts which keep the bottles in the right and stable position for capper process. Besides, the front doors have convenient holes, in order to avoid opening doors, and to adjust the width of the capping disks or spindles, with the purpose to get the right set for your cap.
When should you buy an overflow filler:
Over flow filling has been used has been used to fill low viscosity liquids for many decades, if it’s used for the right product and a correct set up it will give you a very accurate fill
The overflow filler will give you the fill level by the depth off the return tube inside the container, once the product reaches these tube It will go through the tube instead of continuing to fill your container. If you reach the overflow tube in four seconds and leave it filling for more time the fill level in theory will be the same, keeping this in mind when you set-up an overflow machine will help you understand that you only need to fill for enough time so all the nozzles have overflown. All fill nozzles will not fill at the exact same rate and it won’t matter, if you leave the machine filling for enough time eventually all containers will fill and you will get an even cosmetic fill.
We talk about a cosmetic fill because the machine will not know what volume it is filling it will only do it by height so if the bottles you purchase have an internal volume that it’s different the machine will always feel the same height but the larger bottle will have more product than the smaller bottle by volume.
There are many settings but you can have an overflow filler some machines Have the capability of filling at different speeds at different times, this is very useful specially on larger containers because you will be able to fill at very high speeds at the beginning and slow down at the end to avoid splashing, if you don’t have this option you will have to fill all the container at the highest speed on which the machine will not splash.
Most nozzle designs on overflow liquid filler will drip, not because they are defective but because the get wet and when they come out there is product on the outer tube, so when the nozzles come up and they drip while the containers are moving you will get product on the outside of your bottles. An easy solution for this is a drip-tray that most companies offer.
By far, the biggest limitation of an overflow liquid filler is not being able to fill thick products, or high viscosity products. Different companies offer different solutions and some companies like to take on projects of higher viscosity than other. If you plan to fill a product thicker than water, make sure you get written guarantees.
The main problem with filling high viscosity products is that the product will have to overflow, so if it’s to thick instead of overflowing it creates an internal pressure inside the container that is stronger than the top seal and instead of overflowing the product comes up and spills from the top of the containers, trust me, not fun!!!
There are different nozzle designs that can help for thicker products, larger overflow, assisted overflow with vacuum, suck-back, etc.. Make sure the nozzle will work for your product and container.
After all’s been said, overflow fillers are a great solution for thin low viscosity products and can be pushed to work some thicker products