Whereas in the past only one category of product was usually run on aseptic lines, bottlers of sensitive beverages now face an ever-growing demand for flexibility. Beverage producers who process both aseptically filled beverages and juice and carbonated soft drinks need to use 38-millimeter bottle necks for the former and containers with 28-millimeter openings for the latter. With its new, simplified neck changeovers KHS says it has now shortened the time needed to convert the InnoPET Blomax stretch blow moulder – including the preform infeed.
In order to considerably speed up the conversion process as a whole, KHS says it has not just simplified the individual work steps involved but also the concept governing the entire procedure. “We started out by analysing how the operators work,” said Arne Andersen, stretch blow moulding product manager. “On this basis we then considered how all tasks could be made easier and organized as perfectly as possible – paying particular attention to the ergonomics.
Magazines were thus installed that stop the operator having to repeatedly abandon the machine to fetch and carry change parts, for example. We also replaced the grippers to reduce the number of screws that need to be loosened. At the same time, newly developed mandrel heads are now used that can be simply removed by pressing a release spring. This process used to be much more complex.”
In this case, KHS says it went for an approach that thought all of the specific processes through to the end based on actual customer requirements, Andersen said. “We aimed to achieve the best possible improvement within the shortest possible time.” KHS says it managed both: thanks to the simple neck change, the time needed for two operators to convert the KHS InnoPET Blomax16 stretch blow moulder, for instance, has now been cut by a good two thirds to approximately just 86 minutes – including the preform infeed.
As the PET bottles in a block like the KHS InnoPET BloFill are held and conveyed by their necks throughout the entire machine, not only the stretch blow moulder but also the filler has been developed further in order to shorten conversion times. According to the company, the capper was one particular area of focus, where the cone responsible for lifting and closing the bottles needs to be replaced manually. No conversion is required regarding the screw cap, however, as there are two cap feeds – one for each neck diameter in the respective format.
Andersen is convinced that the new neck change option will give beverage producers much greater flexibility, as they can now also run much shorter production cycles for bottles with different necks and therefore reduce their warehousing effort accordingly.
“Some of our customers produce just in time; this means that the finished containers are loaded straight onto the truck without any interim storage. The drastically reduced conversion time will now enable filling operations like these to change necks more frequently; they thus profit from totally new options in their production planning,” Andersen said.
The same goes for converters who can now produce the generally smaller batches for their customers – often in very different bottles – on a single line much more efficiently. The first customers in Asia who are already using the quick neck change developed by KHS are extremely pleased with the amount of time and effort they save, the company claims.
