Automatic control system solves packaging problems

The Stretch Island Fruit Company, located in Washington State, USA, produces “fruit leather”—a 2” x 4” “peel bar” made from natural, 100% fresh fruit that has been dried and peeled. Snacks. The series has 13 different fruit flavors.

The company has traditionally used manual feeding and packaging machinery in combination with traditional production methods, but with the increasing demand for products and the continuous improvement of the company's production facilities, this requires the company to achieve the upgrading of equipment and automation of packaging machinery operations.

At present, the two wrappers used by the company have been unable to meet the production requirements, which often cause production bottlenecks such as noise and environmental pollution. The company uses a polyolefin coated film with a barrier coating. The material is supplied by Flexstar Packaging and has a thickness of 1.5 mils. It has a low-temperature heat-sealing property and is easy to peel off. It is suitable for packaging more viscous products.

Therefore, the company needs to order feed systems and packaging equipment that can fully adapt to high-speed operation and adapt to the stickiness requirements of the “skin hide” products; at the same time, in order to achieve the desired packaging effect, the equipment also needs to undergo long-term design and Supporting process.

Meet customer requirements

At a packaging equipment exhibition in San Francisco, Mr. Bob Sagerson, CEO of the company, witnessed a live demonstration of the packaging machinery exhibited by different suppliers, including the Linium 301 horizontal rotary head wrapping machine produced by Doboy Co. to Mr. Sagerson. It left a deep impression. The wrapper produced by Doboy and its robot feeder and downstream interface are all controlled by a PC. This system can pre-program the product and enable quick replacement of the product.

The wrapping machine's feeding system can accept the "skin bar" products that are conveyed from different directions by conveyor belts, and the tracking system can realize real-time monitoring of the flow production conditions. The conveyor belt can continuously pick up and put down the product without stopping. The crimping gear mechanism ensures that the jaws used for the sealing operation are accurately aligned with the sealing positions of the seals at both ends of the package.

Mr. Sagerson emphasized: "The flexibility of Doboy's wrapper machines facilitates automated control. It is easy to operate Doboy's Linium 301. In packaging machines, they use a large number of standardized parts according to their own design concepts. Equipment maintenance and parts replacement are both easy and cost-effective, and their selection also brings many benefits to us, allowing equipment to be installed and used faster, enabling more flexible packaging solutions at a lower price. ."

Equipment installation and use

After repeated communication and cooperation with Doboy, Stretch Island ordered a Linium 301 wrapper in May 2004 and equipped it with a Delfi feed dual robot. The entire delivery time was 4 months, and Stretch Island's mechanics and packaging equipment operators were sent to the Doboy factory in Wisconsin for technical training.

The Linium 301 horizontal swivel head wrapping machine is available in three operating modes: manual, semi-automatic or fully automatic feed operations. The biggest challenge in the actual production of “wheat strips” comes from how to package the peel strips delivered on the conveyor belts because they are light, sticky, cut into strips, and arranged unevenly. If you want to line up, you need to accurately and reliably position the "skin bar." In response to this situation, Doboy and Stretch Island have worked closely together to design a variable-speed conveyor belt that uses servo drives to control the feed motion, thereby improving the accuracy of product positioning.

The dual robotic Delfi feeder can capture and position up to 400 peel strips per minute and deliver the product to the wrapping machine's conveyor belt. The suction cup on the manipulator is specially designed and is particularly suitable for sucking this lightweight, soft peel bar product.

Mr. Sagerson said: "We have entered the necessary parameters into the system, the robot began to play his powerful role. In the past, because the peel strip contains water, lighter weight, so the performance of the clamp is A big challenge. Now that we have used a robot feeder to handle the peel bar, the reliability is very stable."

The new feed system and wrapper system gradually reached the desired performance requirements of Stretch Island after one-time debugging. Now they can produce 300,000 peel strips per day. Compared with the past, the output has more than doubled. After adopting the automation system, the company saved the floor area of ​​production, realizing the reconfiguration of personnel and production resources, thereby further improving work efficiency. After the product is packaged, the product is manually packed according to different specifications using non-automated operating methods.

Mr. Sagerson said: "We really like that the feed system and packaging system can quickly change the way of feeding and packaging according to the different shapes and sizes of products. This flexibility opens the way for us to open up new products, and we hope that we can develop as soon as possible." Add a second production system."

Source: Modern Packaging