Bottle Filling

Presented to Future Electrix was the requirement of a single head filler to be able to fill Canola oil into 20lt drums,

“We need it to be accurate and easy to use but at a budget, go!” said the Managing Director.

After sitting down and thinking hard about the project we put some sketched ideas on paper, presenting the ideas to maintenance and production to get a feel for their thought around the ideas since they were the ones who were needing to operate and work on it. We finally had a concept ready to deliver to the Managing Director.

The machine was as simple as we could get it, one single frame and single head that could be interchanged to a multi fill arrangement The use of a displacement flowmeter was selected along with control valves from the Bürkert Fluid Control Systems range. Also adding to the saving our, customer had an old stainless steel electrical enclosure that was looking for a new lease on life. After a little bit of elbow grease and TLC it was looking new again.

The system process was a series of step to complete the fill.

1. Place the drum in the fill position, then press the fill request button.
2. To remove aeration of the product the system first introduces Nitrogen into the drum and the filling tube lowers into place.
3. Once the filling tube is lowered into the drum it is positioned 10mm from the bottom that way the greater portion of the filling sees the fill tube outlet submerged in the product.
4. Initial filling is started at low speed, again taking care to reduce the aeration, once the fill tube is fully submerged in the product, the next phase of filling can commence, speeding up the filling volume to the max.
5. Once the majority of the fill is complete the final stages of filling begin. Firstly slowing down the fill speed to get an accurate finish level and simultaneously introducing more nitrogen to displace any remaining oxygen as the filling tube is lifting back to the up position.
6. Finally a manual cap system to push the cap into place.

Allowance in both hardware and software for an upgrades such as auto drum delivery, auto capping and conveying has been built into the system. A fully dynamic recipe system was also implemented to allow for fill times, fill volume and speed to be changed up 5 times during one drum fill, this is to help with a possible change in product or container that may happen down the line.