Challenges

1. Quickly & safely fill bags, cases, and drums with one net-weight auger filler.

Containers:

The customer sells their product in three primary containers: drums, cases, and bags.

To accommodate the various container heights, two sets of augers were provided so the stroke could always reach the bottom for a dense bottom-up fill. The shorter auger set was provided to fill drums and bags, and the longer set was for the cases. A removable bag clamp assembly was provided that would hold the bag while on the scale.

The bottom-up fill packs the product tightly without dropping the product which produces dust, waste, and exaggerated volume.

Speed:

With auger fillers, there’s usually a tradeoff between speed and accuracy – the higher accuracy, the slower the fill cycle and vice versa. However, by using twin augers we were able to provide both a accurate and fast fill.

One auger was large and quick while the other was small and accurate. The first 85% of the fill, both augers rotate at full speed to fill as quickly as possible. Once it reached 85% of the weight, the large auger would shutdown and the smaller auger would fill the using a dribble mode to the exact weight.

Safety:

The filler is fully automatic for cases and drums, but must be semi-automatic to allow the operator to load bags.

Because of this human interaction, the filling station was equipped with a safety mat, light curtains, and foot switches to make sure that the operator is never in a dangerous place during the fill cycle.

2. Run by 1 Operator with a Single Point of Control

In order to justify this project, the entire line had to be run by one operator. That operator was gowned and located in the filling room. To help the operator from running around from machine to machine to start/stop, acknowledge alarms, and change over equipment, a single point of human machine interface was needed.

The Solution:

API designed a controls architecture that allowed all of the equipment to be controlled from one HMI (Human Machine Interface). This allowed each piece of equipment to be monitored for status, acknowledge alarms, and change over products from one screen reducing the amount of operators required to run the packaging line.

By adding features of programmed downtime, we can anticipate when machines will need the operator’s attention to replenish case flats, labels, pallets, or any other dunnage and have these events happen simultaneously or sequentially as the operator demands. This reduces downtime by minimizing the amount of times the line starts and stops.

Result