PET bottles are regularly being made lighter. They are also becoming curvier and shapes are diversifying to differentiate brands and product ranges. Lighter and more slimline, with a centre of gravity which is often higher, the new PET bottles have become less stable. They fall over easily during inter-machine conveying, laning /dividing or accumulation phases. This is particularly the case between the filler and the overwrapping machine (usually a shrink-wrapper). Larger fall rates on conveyors not originally designed with these types of constraints undermine the entire line's efficiency in many plants.
The presence of 'down' bottles among the mass flow of bottles has an even more severe impact due to the fact that they are difficult to detect on a bulk conveyor or accumulation table, especially at high speed. The fallen bottles disrupt line operation at multiple critical points, often causing downtime. If down bottles reach the feed of the shrink-wrapper, they block the machine infeed system.
To save its customers the cost and downtime of totally re-engineering their conveying systems, Gebo Cermex developed SecurFlow for any type of line. In a nutshell, SecurFlow detects down bottles and removes them from the conveyor and is installed in Plug and Play on existing high-speed PET bottling lines.
The equipment designed by the Gebo Cermex robotic development team consists of a high-performance detection system capable of identifying a down bottle in the middle of the product flow, a 6-axis robot with adapted tooling to evacuate down bottles, and a rejection bin in which they are dropped off.
The advantages of SecurFlow are:
High performance thanks to its advanced detection system, SecurFlowTM eliminates 99% of down bottles.
SecurFlow is effective at high speed, up to 130,000 bottles/hour.
Independent of other equipment in use, it fits into 90% of standard bottling lines.
SecurFlow is an autonomous system which is installed in Plug & Play without lengthy line downtimes.
Sleek and compact, SecurFlow takes up minimal space on the line.
The end of machine downtime due to the presence of bottles lying down
Vincent Piron, product manager engineering, integration and conveying, commented,
"Designed for existing PET bottling lines, SecurFlow can be successfully implemented in other contexts. For example, optimisation of new high-speed lines to achieve very high efficiencies in excess of 92%, with bottles of complex shapes. Validated for PET bottles, we believe that our new equipment could represent a solution for other primary packaging likely to fall over during conveying. Plastic bottles for home and personal care are part of our current research and development effort as are glass bottles.. We are also considering problems occurring upstream of filling, which could in particular concern empty glass containers: bottles, pots and jars. The efficiency potentials are numerous where SecurFlow will emerge as a simple and practical solution".
