Disinfection in a compact form

Sanitizing solutions are not only needed in times of the corona virus, solutions for hand sanitizing, but also all kinds of objects are also required in “normal” periods.

2017, the Swiss Army wrote a plant for bottling of high-purity alcohol and sealing vessels in various sizes from. Not only was a cap closure to be used, but pump closures also had to be installed. The challenge was the compactness of the system. Feeding, filling machine, closing machine and output of the bottle had to be fitted in a very tight space, at a clock rate of up to 50 bottles p.m. should be produced. Of course you had to meet the very high quality standard of the Swiss army. In addition, the requirement was to design the entire system with EX protection, including ATEX approval.

Since we have always placed great value on the compactness of the systems in our company, we accepted the challenge. An inline-filler with six rotary lobe pumps for up to 500ml filling volume and our GSM500 automatic sealing machine were used. The bottles are fed from the conveyor belt to the capping machine using a turntable. The pumps and caps are fed in via a sorting pot. To prevent contamination, the conveyor belt between the filling and sealing machine was completely encapsulated.

Compactness combined with the requirement for a high speed of screwing was a big challenge for our engineers. They solved this by combining attachment and screwing in one motion and optimizing the motion sequences. The pump closures were placed in the same station, with the risers being threaded in using pliers. The cover can be threaded through an adjustable reverse rotation and then screwed on with a forward rotation. Of course, the useful parameters such as set the torque and holding time via the HMI.

The low surface tension of the product with a high fill level just below the container opening presented a particular challenge. Of course, the product was not allowed to “spill over” during the transfer between the filling machine and the sealing station. This was achieved by precisely coordinating the movements “run in a traffic jam”, “run-in in the transport star” and “transport in the transport star”. Of course, all stations were equipped with the necessary control functions and IQ / OQ / PQ documentation was included.