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Langen Packaging Group recently supplied a Vento cartoner to a respected food manufacturer,  to provide effective cartoning for their sealed trays of ready meals into both pre-glued cartons and trapezoidal sleeves at high speed.

The in-feed system developed to take the trays coming from 2 upstream machines at 125/min sees the ready meal trays going through product rotation directly into buckets ready for insert.

With special exchangeable lugs it was made possible to handle both standard rectangular cartons as well as trapezoidal sleeves.

To discuss this application in more detail contact Victoria Marshall @ Springvale Equipment.

There are a number of reasons why faulty packages especially in the food and confectionery industry need to be unpacked.  This may be necessary due to machine start-up waste, wrong coding, best-before-use date overdue, under-or overfilling etc.  It would be too expensive to unpack such material manually or to completely throw away the product.

The German made PACK-SAVER range of Product Recovery Machines from LEU-TRONIC are designed to allow a clean separation of product from its packaging material.  The PACK-SAVER does not work with knives, but using adjustable tear-off rails to open the packages.  Due to the rail rotation and the special shape of the assorting chamber, an air-stream is produced which “blows” the empty wrapping material out of the machine.  The product is then transported to a vibration sieving device, where an exhausting device separates small wrapper particles from the product, which then can be re-processed and used again.

Depending on product, a capacity of up to 400kg per hour can be achieved.  Only one operator is needed to control a PACK-SAVER.

Typical products which are being recovered are;

coffee, tea, sugar, confectionery, chewing gum, chocolate bars, biscuits, crisps, detergent tablets etc.

Further information:

Springvale Equipment Ltd – 01420 542505 – www.springevaleltd.co.uk

With around 100 machines sold in the last three decades for pharmaceutical applications –thus representing around 30% on the total installations world wide – the Unifill technology is proven to be particularly attractive for the packing of a variety of liquid and semi-dense OTC products.

While in Europe and the Americas the most common product packed with our technology are cough syrup, mouth washers, neutraceutical products, topic ointments, pain-relief creams, tooth-pastes, etc the Far East market is mostly concentrating on vitamins, herbal drinks, energisers, body oils, etc.

From a packaging point of view the production of drinkable medicines into disposable plastic unit doses offers great economical and practical advantages in respect to glass containers which are often critical for what concerns sourcing, transportation, handling and outer packing.

The large consumption of healthy products such as ginseng-based drinks, herbal supplements, vitamins and energetic drinks – especially in the Far East markets – greatly contributed to the success of the Unifill technology in the para-pharmaceutical and the healthcare industry. China is  today Unifill’s main market where a number of machines have been sold with over 50 installations, 70% of which are for pharmaceutical applications.

HYGIENE

Although Unifill machines are not aseptic and are therefore not suitable for the handling of sterile products such as injectables, a special ultra-clean package is available to greatly increase hygienic handling and filling conditions. In particular, the ultra clean package – that is available for any Unifill model- includes thermoforming with sterile air, inert gas flushing before or after filling, magnetic dosing and filling unit, laminar flow with HEPA filter.

Further to this, Unifill has recently developed, together with some of the top material suppliers, some projects where the Unifill machine utilise special retort materials such as PP/EVOH/PP or PA/EVOH/PP. Such materials are suitable for autoclaving and/or Gamma rays sterilisation.

SUPPOSITORIES

The RESNOVA machines represent UNIFILL’s ultra modern interpretation of suppositories packing. These hi-tech machines have been designed by the biggest world experts of suppositories packing, following the inputs and the suggestions gathered from the market in over 30 years of experience.

Fully complying with latest GMP regulations, the RESNOVA machines combine the most advanced manufacturing technologies with technical solutions that are absolutely innovative to the suppositories market.

Easy and quick size changeover operations -only 2 hours to switch from PVC/PE to ALU/PE and vice versa against the 8 hours needed on conventional systems – balcony construction for immediate tooling access, no top trimming required, in-production reel replacement and many other features make this product a dream come true for the operators.

The RESNOVA family – entirely electronically controlled to grant the highest reliability and accuracy- consists of two models: the Resnova-15 for outputs between 12,000 and 24,000 suppositories per hour (available in different configurations and versions also depending on the number of cooling units) and the Resnova-35, capable of reaching up to 35,000 suppositories per hour.

Contact UK Agents:

SPRINGVALE EQUIPMENT LTD – 01420 542505 – www.springvaleltd.co.uk

Do you have problems with damaged sealing jaws on your form-fill-seal machines caused by over zealous operators trying to clean melted PE from the jaws? 

A lot of companies use standard brushes for this job and this can cause long term damage to the machined jaws creating problems with leakers.

Springvale is a supplier of specialised brass brushes imported from Japan that are designed specifically for this job and are already used by many of our UK customers and competitors.  In addition to the supply of these specialist brass brushes we can often help source wear & tear spare parts for other f-f-s machines made in Europe and can offer UK based engineers.

Regarding new machinery we are the UK agent for:

 -          Sanko high speed stick pack machines for dry products

-          Boato Pack vertical f-f-s machines for sachets, wet stick packs, wet tissues

-          Mespack horizontal f-f-s machines for sachets, stand-up pouches and

            vertical f-f-s machines for wet/dry stick packs.

 For further information on brass brushes and spares please contact our in-house specialist:

 Alyson Miller 01420 542505

amiller@springvaleltd.co.uk

www.springvaleltd.co.uk

Pack’R, represented in the UK by Springvale Equipment Ltd, has developed and patented an advanced ‘clean in place’ (CIP) system in association with a major detergent manufacturer which allows very rapid change over between products with enzymes to non-biological products.

Several machines have been delivered to this one customer, the most recent of which was a monobloc 24 head filler (with 2 capping turrets each with 8 head screw capping heads) producing 180 containers/minute for 3-litre bottles. CIP features include: the level of cross contamination is less than 50ppm (parts per million); change of product in less than 10 minutes for a 24 head filler; total production of effluent during cleaning less than 150ltrs (24 head); product and effluents are in a closed circuit so there is no risk of operator contact.

Pack’R, which supplies weigh filler/cappers for liquid and viscous products, also offers indexing rotary machines for lower outputs (5 litres at 20 containers/minute) or the Compact continuous motion rotary machine (5 litres at 45 containers/minute) withe the same CIP system.

How do you guarantee people’s safety when dealing with dangerous or toxic materials?  Not only that, how do you automate a dangerous filling process while guaranteeing the right materials go to the right place at the right quantity?

For years, Feige Filling has been supplying industrial machines used to fill different containers.  In 2006, this German company developed a new robotic filling technology equipped with Cognex vision that opens up completely new opportunities for filling with regard to safety, speed and cost effectiveness.  Equipped with the In-Sight ™5401 camera plus PatMax™, the “Robot Filler”, a robot with a four or six-jointed arm, can locate the different container stoppers or filling even when they arrive in various positions on the pallet.

Vision tools that find and fill One of the RobotFiller’s most important functions is to locate the stoppers with screw closures on the drums. As the stoppers are arranged off-centre at the edge of the drum lid, they tend to be in a different position on every pallet. Without a precision vision system, safe and rapid opening, filling and closing would not be possible. Cognex PatMax technology makes In-Sight especially fast and reliable. This revolutionary tool for high-precision location of objects using pattern-matching technology reads and recognises an enormous variety of patterns. Once the stopper is located, the filling process starts.

The first step is for the RobotFiller to pick up a tool which it uses to remove the screw closures of the drums and put them down on a tray. It then changes tool and grips the filling valve to suit the filling job. This is the innovational step for the future of automatic filling of large containers on pallets. Without human intervention, RobotFiller can switch different filling valves and tools for further processing fully automatically, considerably accelerating the filling process. In addition, the RobotFiller protects staff when critical substances are being handled, as the complete filling area can be enclosed and subjected to extraction. Following precisely calibrated filling, the jointed-arm robot switches tools again to pick up the stoppers and close the containers. With the drums filled, the pallet is ready to be transported by the conveyor belt. 

Safety in traceability – the right material for the right container

Code-reading properties mean that the In-Sight 5401 can detect every container. The information passed on to a safety system further up the chain ensures that the right containers for filling are located on the pallet. This plausibility check means that the In-Sight 5401 increases process safety and helps save costs, as the incorrect assignment of filling material to container is ruled out. Plus the rugged, robust characteristics of the In-Sight 5401 are of real value in this kind of operating environment susceptible as it is to toxic material and flammable substances.

 For engineer Axel Frank, Automation Technology Manager at Feige Filling, the benefits of the In-Sight 5401 with the jointed-arm robot are obvious. Attached directly to the end of the robot arm and supported by eight LEDs arranged in a circle, the intelligent camera system ensures optimum processes. The automation expert particularly appreciates the fact that he does not require any additional evaluation electronics with an industry PC. He also values the clear assignment of interfaces which makes it much easier for users to familiarize themselves with the system.

Just add vision  – to get the most flexible filling system in the world

Cognex real-time image detection means that the RobotFiller is currently the most flexible filling system in the world. Speed, cost saving, process reliability and above all increased protection for the operator make Feige Filling high technology plus innovative Cognex vision systems the compatible combination of the future.

2011 has been kick started with the return of Victoria Marshall. Victoria has, as many of you know, been on maternity leave with her 2nd baby – a girl – Lucy. Having been away for 7mths she has now returned to the office keen to get back in touch with her many contacts and with those projects she had been building up prior to her leave.

Victoria has for years now been working very closely with our Principal Langen Packaging Group who manufacture cartoning machinery for many products, but specialise in offering solutions for difficult to handle and high speed applications. With her in-depth knowledge of their workings she often helps customers develop their initial requirements to ensure they get a machine to fully incorporate all of their needs.