BOTTLE FILLER - CAPPER
BY HOPPMANN

UNPARALELLED RELIABILITY & PERFORMANCE

compact filler - capper
operational and technical details

There are many suppliers of fillers and cappers and customers have choices. In monetary terms, the best value is provided by a machine whose combination of the purchase cost plus the operational costs over the life of the systems - say 10 years - works out to the least amount. In other words, the most appropriate machine is one that has the least "ownership costs."
This is not always easy to discern, and one frequently makes a determination to acquire a particuler machine based on purchase cost or prior experience with the supplier.

We have applied our 50 plus years of building some of the most technologically advanced and reliable bottling systems in the world to the design and manufacture of this compact filler - capper. We have designed it to be as dependable and verstaile as possible, simple to operate and maintain, and to keep it affordably priced. It is built to exacting standards with the highest quality materials.

Discussed below are operational and three principal technical aspects of this machine - container handling, filling and capping.

OPERATIONAL ASPECTS
The machine is set up for a particular product, container and closure through manual installation of parts and tooling. These are precisely made and installed without the necessity for tools, adjustments or the need for a skilled mechanic. The actual operation of the machine - such as filling volumes, capping torques etc. - is pre-programmed into the controller and operated via a touch screen panel. Problems that may occur during operation are also annunciated on this screen.

HANDLING SYSTEM

An effective, reliable and precise container handling system is crucial to consistent filling and capping. This machine is designed with an indexing turret driven by a servo. Servo motors are extremely reliable and versatile devices equipped with highly precise position sensors and feedback control for accurate positioning.
They are also easily synchronised with filling, nozzle movements and capping. This synchronizing is performed electronically through the axis and machine controllers and results in an extremely reliable system capable of many years of trouble free operation. It also provides unmatched versatility to accommodate future products, containers and closures.

FILLING SYSTEM
A bottle filling system consists of two parts. The liquid metering system and the delivery system for the metered liquid into the bottle.
Liquid Metering
We offer two types of liquid metering system for use in this compact filling capping machine, a piston type and one that uses a precision flow meter. In the piston type, liquid is metered by displacement of the piston inside the cylinder with the piston operated by a high precision servo actuator. This provides for accurate and consistent liquid metering, remote adjustment from the operator panel and no bottle-no fill.
In the case of flow meter metering, the liquid is fed through a precise electronic flow meter that operates a valve when the desired volume is reached. This too can be adjusted from the operator panel and provides for no bottle-no fill. Both these systems can be equipped with CIP for operation under sanitary conditions.
In addition, we can also provide other types of metering systems such as level filling, mass flow or auger.
Liquid Delivery
The liquid delivery system consists of the nozzle design and filling method - static from above the bottle mouth or a diving nozzle. The design parameters for the delivery system are determined by liquid characteristics such as viscosity, whether its a Newtonian or non-Newtonian fluid, whether the liquid foams or not - and also by the size of the bottle mouth and speed of delivery into the bottle. Here too, the system is designed to provide the widest degree of versatility.

CAPPING

There are many types of plastic and metal caps used to close containers but they all have a few things in common. Consistent assembly with their containers requires accurate positioning of both caps and containers and accurate control of both the motion and force applied to assemble them together.

In blow molded plastic or glass bottles for example, there are often significant variations in the location of the mouth of the bottles in relation to the main body of the bottle. This means that if the bottles are centered under the capping head by means of gripping the main body of the bottle - as is frequently done - it results in variations in location of the mouths of the bottles which in turn results in a less than consistent capping operation.

We overcome this problem by actually centering the bottle mouths under the capping head - see picture on left - to achieve consistent capping. The illustration also indicates a servo screw capper working as snap PP capper - a demonstration of the versatility of our designs.