Intelligent high-speed and precise labeling

Hiram Walker produces the prestigious coffee-flavored Kahlua wine, which is supplied all over the world, and most of the wine's bottling work is performed by its AR plant in Ft. Smith. In a 200,000-square-foot facility, nine bottled lines complete the Kahlua bottling and other products of the company.
In 1998, in order to meet the market demand for this hot-selling wine, Hiram Walk decided to add a production line dedicated to Kahlua. “We had hoped to form a new production line with the equipment of Ft. Smith and other Hiram Walker factories, but we soon found that this could not meet the demand,” said Rick DeHem, bottler engineering technologist. Their last resort was to combine new and modified equipment and produce more than 300 bottles per minute with high efficiency. Although this production line only needs three different sets of accessories, it can handle five sizes of bottles: 1 liter, 750 milliliters, 375 milliliters, 350 milliliters and 700 milliliters, because 375 milliliters and 350 milliliters, 750 milliliters and 700 milliliters Bottle size is similar.
The key to achieving high efficiency is the adoption of a new high-speed labeling machine by an Italian company, PE Labelers. This machine can be tagged in four different positions in the Kahlua bottle. In addition, this labelling machine can be easily converted to handle any of the five sizes of bottles without the need for tool assistance. Represented by B&J Machinery in the United States, this labelling machine has achieved complete success. “The biggest challenge is to label the neck and shoulders of the bottle because the labeling machine has to inspect the bottle to put a ribbon after filling and capping. This is the first label made by PE for this application. Machines are a real challenge, which has led some people, including myself, to stay in their factories for a long time, and tested all five sizes of bottles before PE shipped the machines to our company." DeHem Say.
All these efforts are worth it because the machine has been running without any problems. "The operation is very good and the accuracy is incredible. Even for those bottles that are not round, the accuracy of the placement of the label is within 1/16 inch," DeHem said. "The most important thing is that since the installation of the machine in June 1999, we have never had any maintenance. It even has an automatic lubrication system, so we don't care about lubricants."
JIT Glass Bottle Delivery In order to speed up the processing of the bottles, the bottles placed on the pallets are transported directly from the delivery truck to a Mathews unloading machine outside the packaging area and then to an ABC carton remover. Anchor Glass's bottle was placed in a box with its bottom facing up and the lid was unsealed. The box passes down the conveyor belt and is turned over after entering the unpacking machine. The side belt slowly angles the box to the conveyor belt below and the bottle falls onto the belt.
The new line was installed in a wide, short space, so the equipment was installed side-by-side rather than the desired straight-line installation, and the bottle conveyor belt also turned some U-turns. Bottles pass through the system in bulk and only form a single column when entering a machine. The accumulation table is placed in a number of important locations to ensure that the equipment is still operating properly when problems occur downstream. Conveyor belts and stackers are supplied by AMBEC. John Hoffman, assistant manager of the bottling line, said: “The system was designed to provide three minutes of accumulation, which is enough time to handle most of the problems that have occurred. If the time required is longer, then in general, this issue is already serious enough to be needed. The entire production line was shut down for a while.” After the unloader, the empty bottles were turned with a U-bend, passed through an accumulating table and divided into two columns by AMBEC's pressureless combiner/inliner system. In this system, the bottle is gently guided in a single row by a non-pressure guide rail. The system includes sensors and ejectors to handle those fallen bottles.
Each bottle of processing equipment includes a US Bottlers' Sanitair bottle cleaner, a 48-head Horix gravity/vacuum rotary filler, an Owens-Illinois 8-head rotary capper, and a ribbon The buttoning machine is used to attach a ribbon and a small medal provided by Stoffel Seals to the bottle. After the two conveyor belts were passed through another U-bend, the bottles were reassembled onto a large conveyor belt and sent to the labeler.
To this end, except for the depalletizer, all equipment is available in Ft. Smith or other Hiram Walker factories. Dehem said: “We originally thought about buying new cleaners, fillers and cappers that matched the size of the production line, but we already had these equipment, so we decided to modify them. In fact, the front-end equipment Dividing into two assembly lines brings great benefits: When a device fails on an assembly line, we can still run the entire production line at half the speed.”
Hiram Walker sent each line's cleaner/filler/capper to B&J Machinery for modification and synchronization. B&J installed a spool after dismantling each machine's drive. A tape was attached to each machine on the shaft and a phase adjuster was installed on each machine to adjust the timing to synchronize all three machines. According to Dehem, in addition to guaranteeing the smooth handling and conveying of the bottles, it can also greatly reduce the noise generated.
The labeling machine featuring four separate working heads is behind the ribbon fastener. The assembled bottles pass through a collecting table, and then another AMBEC device arranges them into a single row into the labeling machine. This machine integrates four separate indexing heads into a large 1800 mm diameter carousel. The machine adds the logo in order: bottleneck, shoulders, front and back. The paper brand was made with 50# Williamsburg stock, offset, provided by Carqueville Graphic.
"The independent heading is one of the strengths of the PE marking machine," Dehem said: "The other machines we see use a header and more than one brand, but this is very tricky. PE marking machine Use separate headers and different logos to make it easier to control."
A lever on the carousel grabs the bulge on the edge of the bottle to place the bottle for labeling. This process is completed within the first 15 degrees of the rotation of the carousel after the bottle enters the machine.
All four headers are similar. A horizontal label basket provides the label with a blank face inside. There are four pawls on a vertical axis of rotation. After a roller, they take a trademark from the basket and apply the glue to the back of the logo. Western Adhesives offers RMS80 adhesives.
As the carousel continues to rotate, the pawl transmits the logo to the drum and the logo is affixed to the bottle as the drum rotates. There are several claws on the drum to remove the logo from the pawl, and a sponge brush behind the claw presses the logo onto the bottle. The bottle is rotated about 90 degrees against the brush so that most of the trademark is glued to the bottle. The bottle then turns back and the brush sticks the edges of the logo. This process is repeated at the other caps until all four logos are posted. Changing from one size bottle to another is very simple and does not require any tools. A crank handle is used to adjust the machine to handle different bottles, and a spacer is used to change the height of the logo.
The gentle baler bottles were reassembled onto a large conveyor belt, passed through another U-bend, and sent to a new Hartness International Model 825 case packer. The machine has three widths and four lengths of specifications to load the bottles into empty boxes delivered from the cartoner. The bottle is divided into three columns by vertical column guides after it enters the packer. Because the ribbons and medals are easily damaged and easily fall from the bottles, Hiram Walker's machine is equipped with an inflatable transmission system. This eliminates the pressure exerted on the bottle, prevents the bottle from twisting and jumping when entering the grid area, and then the bottle falls from the grid area into the box. In this system, an inflatable bag is installed on the column guide. When the bottles are in place before the grid zone, the bags move forward, inflate and capture the bottles. The inflatable bag gently puts the bottle into the grid claw system, which introduces the bottle into the box. In order to reduce the impact on the bottle, the boxing platform is equipped with a hydraulic shock absorber and a lift lifts the box to the bottom of the bottle when the bottle is released.
"Hartness is working well and the inflatable transmission system does solve the bottle-packing problem," DeHem said. "I hope all of our production lines will be equipped with such a case packer."
This machine is characterized by the ability to switch without tools for different sizes of bottles and integrates an extremely sophisticated control system. The system includes an operator console through which the operator can select the product to be processed. The machine's parameters are automatically set. The console also has a diagnostics panel to display fault information.
A Marsh Overture 2X inkjet printer prints the lot number, production date, and product barcode on the box after the box leaves the boxer. The box is then passed through a Thermo Ramsey Icore weight meter to check for missing bottles or empty bottles. The box was then transferred to a Mathews pallet machine. When each level of boxes is full, the pallet platforms descend and the next level rises to the top. When the four-story box is full, the pallet is loaded into a car. The trolley pulls the pallet through an inductive component to detect that the box is completely on the pallet without hanging over the edge. The cart then transports the pallets to the conveyor belt and the conveyor belt to the automated warehouse.
The production line automated the design of the entire packaging line, from the box unpacking machine to the boxing machine, and the box conveyor belt was completed by Lone Star Automated Systems of Houston. This system can adjust the speed of conveyor belts and filling equipment to match the machine speed. Conveyors and machines are equipped with variable speed motors. When the bottle is blocked, sensors installed along the production line will reduce the speed of the production line.