Classifications

• • B—PERFORMING OPERATIONS; TRANSPORTING
  • B67—OPENING, CLOSING OR CLEANING BOTTLES, JARS OR SIMILAR CONTAINERS; LIQUID HANDLING
  • B67C—CLEANING, FILLING WITH LIQUIDS OR SEMILIQUIDS, OR EMPTYING, OF BOTTLES, JARS, CANS, CASKS, BARRELS, OR SIMILAR CONTAINERS, NOT OTHERWISE PROVIDED FOR; FUNNELS
  • B67C7/00—Concurrent cleaning, filling, and closing of bottles; Processes or devices for at least two of these operations
  • B67C7/0006—Conveying; Synchronising
• • B—PERFORMING OPERATIONS; TRANSPORTING
  • B67—OPENING, CLOSING OR CLEANING BOTTLES, JARS OR SIMILAR CONTAINERS; LIQUID HANDLING
  • B67C—CLEANING, FILLING WITH LIQUIDS OR SEMILIQUIDS, OR EMPTYING, OF BOTTLES, JARS, CANS, CASKS, BARRELS, OR SIMILAR CONTAINERS, NOT OTHERWISE PROVIDED FOR; FUNNELS
  • B67C7/00—Concurrent cleaning, filling, and closing of bottles; Processes or devices for at least two of these operations
  • B67C7/0006—Conveying; Synchronising
  • B67C2007/006—Devices particularly adapted for container filling

Definitions

• the invention relates to a method and a production plant for filling, closing, equipping and / or packaging containers or the like. According to the preamble of claims 1 and 11, respectively.
• Production plants are used, which are usually made up of a large number of machines that are linked by a conveyor to form a complete line. Which machines are used depends on whether one-way or reusable containers are to be processed.
• the type of packaging (box, tray, display, shrink film, cardboard packaging, folding box, etc.) also plays a role, which in turn is influenced by the container material and ultimately the product to be filled.
• Vessel materials (bottles, cans, glasses or the like) and others (closures, labels, adhesives, packaging material, filling goods, cleaning agents) are made available from a raw product store.
• This warehouse can be a picking warehouse, which is equipped with repacking and sorting devices for individual assembly of deliveries.
• An example of a production system typical for reusable bottle systems is shown in schematic form in FIG. 2 of the German patent DE 196 12 652 Cl.
• the transporters connecting the individual machines are designed as so-called buffer transporters with high storage capacity in order to prevent the propagation of disturbances.
• This solution is not only space-consuming, but also entails high costs for acquisition, operation and maintenance.
• buffer transporters themselves are an additional source of interference, for example due to bottles falling over or being jammed.
• the achievable buffer times are relatively narrow, since the buffer capacities cannot be dimensioned as large as required for economic reasons, i.e. only comparatively short-lasting faults can be buffered successfully, while longer-lasting interruptions nevertheless affect neighboring machines with a time delay and reduce the system efficiency.
• filling beverages is a process that should ideally run continuously so as not to impair the quality of the beverages.
• changing filling speeds have a negative influence on the foaming behavior and the oxygen uptake.
• a filler stop triggered, for example, by a labeling or packaging machine arranged after a filling machine disadvantageously usually leads to a complete filler round being discharged.
• the invention is therefore based on the object of specifying a method for filling, closing, equipping and / or packaging vessels and a production facility therefor which enables favorable efficiency with high flexibility at the same time.
• the filling and closing of vessels can advantageously be carried out continuously, without being influenced by subsequent treatment steps, with high performance and low efficiency. At the same time, an improvement in efficiency in the equipment and / or packaging area can be achieved.
• An intermediate warehouse can also be used for the equipment and packaging part of the production system to fulfill commissioning tasks, so that the storage volume to be kept ready on ready-packed containers or containers in the distribution warehouse can be reduced, or if necessary, this can be dispensed with entirely, especially if In the equipment and packaging area of the production plant, several equipment and packaging lines are to be provided in parallel and capable of working.
• the picking area can begin after the equipment machines, so that the containers coming from the various equipment machines can be fed to specific packaging machines in such a way that at the same time there is an arrangement of the cargo required for shipping.
• direct loading of transport vehicles trucks or the like is also conceivable without an intermediate distribution warehouse or separate picking warehouse for the packed full goods.
• the figure shows a production system P for bottling drinks in bottles or the like.
• the entire production system P essentially has four sections or areas: a first storage area 1, a filling area 2, a second storage area 3 and an equipment and packaging area 4.
• the filling area 2 forms a first section
• the equipment and packaging area 4 forms a second section of the actual vascular treatment.
• the picking area 5 is identified by a dash-dotted line. Deviating from the illustration, including the equipment machines (labeling machines), it can possibly extend into the storage area 3 used for intermediate storage.
• the delimitation of the picking area depends, among other things. depends on whether only one or different types of drinks are to be filled into uniform or individual containers.
• a computer control center 7 is provided for controlling the picking tasks.
• the storage area 1 there are the empty vessels or containers intended for filling, for example one-way bottles made of glass or plastic, which are palletized in layers and delivered to the warehouse by a bottle manufacturer and used as a protective film.
• the storage area 1 can also be used to hold other raw materials, such as labels, closures, packaging material, adhesives, filling goods, system cleaning agents, etc.
• a film removal machine 8 is provided for removing the film from the stack of bottles. From there, the stack of bottles standing on pallets reach a new glass pusher 9, which first lifts a slip lid lying on the top bottle layer and throws it into a slip lid press 10 before the successive work cycles begin to push off the individual bottle layers in layers. There is always an intermediate layer made of cardboard or plastic between two adjacent bottle layers. These intermediate layers are collected in a container 11 provided for this purpose. The empty pallet remaining after the bottom bottle layer has been pushed off reaches an empty pallet magazine 12.
• the successively pushed-off bottle layers are transferred to a transport device (conveyor belts) that converts the bottles into a single-track, continuously conveyed bottle row and are transported in the direction of the arrow to an inspection machine 13 in the filling area 2, which detects and removes damaged or foreign objects.
• a further transport device likewise indicated by an arrow, is used to continue the transport of the usable bottles to a rinser 14 and from there to a filler 15 with an integrated capper.
• Rinser, filler and sealer can be combined to form a block unit in a manner known per se.
• a pasteurizer (not shown) can be provided in the area after the capper.
• the bottles After rinsing, filling and closing (with a neutral or uniform closure) the bottles pass a control and coding station 16, where for example filling level, closure, tightness or other quality criteria are checked and, if necessary, a coding identifying the content is applied.
• the Filling and closing can be done continuously at high output (60,000 to 80,000 bottles / hour).
• the filled and controlled bottles are then fed to a display palletizer 17 by means of a conveyor.
• this machine converts them into displays and palletizes them in several layers.
• the loaded display pallets can now be transported in a manner known per se by forklift or with a computer-controlled industrial truck to specific parking spaces A, B, C in the warehouse, e.g. depending on the type of drink and / or bottle.
• the display pallets from the above-mentioned storage spaces A, B, C are deliberately fed to depalletizing machines 19a to 19c, the layers being depalletized and removed from the displays Bottles can be fed via appropriate conveyor devices in three equipment and packaging lines 18a to 18c. Empty pallets that become free during the depalletizing process enter an empty pallet magazine 20, while the empty displays can be returned to the display palletizing machine 17.
• a labeling machine 21a to 21c the three labeling machines being able to be set up in such a way that the bottles — depending on which of the machines they are fed to — can be provided with different equipment.
• the labeling machines are followed by packing machines 23a to 23c, as seen in the bottle flow direction, a so-called cluster packer 22, which is used to wrap bottle groups, upstream of the packer 23a in the line 18a in one box cut (six packs) is provided.
• the conveyor device feeding the bottles from the labeling machine is designed such that the bottles can be fed either to cluster packer 22 or packer 23a.
• the packaging machines 23a to 23c can also be of different designs, depending on which packaging form (box, box, tray, display, shrink packaging, etc.) is desired.
• the palletizing machines 24a to 24c following in the packaging lines 18a to 18c, for the supply of which an empty pallet magazine 25 is ready, are also adapted accordingly. After layer-by-layer palletizing, the pallets are fed downstream stretch wrapping machines 26a to 26c for transport security, where each loaded pallet is wrapped with an elastic film or provided with other strapping.
• the full goods pallets which are ready for dispatch after leaving the stretch winder 26a to 26c can now be loaded directly onto transport vehicles 27 (trucks or the like) waiting in the loading area 6.
• transport vehicles 27 trucks or the like
• the equipment and packaging lines 18a to 18c produce according to the just-in-time principle, so that the individually adjustable packaging ix and the desired packaging variants can be produced on a commission basis, in such a way that the transport vehicles 27 are loaded as directly as possible for their delivery routes.
• the computer control center 7 is assigned to the picking area 5 and is connected to the controls of the machines located in the picking area.
• the bottles and / or the filling product is changeable, it can be expedient to extend the picking area 5 deviating from the drawing to the storage area 3, so that the labeling machines 21a to 21c and the depalletizers 19a to 19c also belong to the picking area.
• bottles could be able to change the transport route after leaving one of the labeling machines 21a to 21c by controllable switches or the like (not shown), and thereby selectively feeding one of the subsequent packaging machines 23a to 23c.
• Picking area 5 associated storage can be provided, which can, however, advantageously get by with much less floor space than in conventional production systems that have been customary up to now.
• the equipment can also be carried out immediately after filling / closing, i.e. before the intermediate storage, if, for example, only one product type is filled into a uniform container and provided with the same equipment, but the packaging is different.

Applications Claiming Priority (3)

Publications (2)

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• 2000
  • 2000-07-13 DE DE10034241A patent/DE10034241A1/de not_active Withdrawn
• 2001
  • 2001-06-19 DE DE50111282T patent/DE50111282D1/de not_active Expired - Lifetime
  • 2001-06-19 DK DK01940581T patent/DK1299304T3/da active
  • 2001-06-19 EP EP01940581A patent/EP1299304B1/fr not_active Expired - Lifetime
  • 2001-06-19 AU AU2001274110A patent/AU2001274110A1/en not_active Abandoned
  • 2001-06-19 WO PCT/EP2001/006901 patent/WO2002006151A1/fr active IP Right Grant
  • 2001-06-19 AT AT01940581T patent/ATE342867T1/de not_active IP Right Cessation

Non-Patent Citations (1)

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