JPH0487911A - Automatic line capping machine - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To make the above capping machine repeat the same action accurately and automatically by a method wherein a series of equipment, which repeatedly performs supply of caps to vials transferred and tightening of caps, is arranged along the linear stream of the vials, and torque limiters and drivers are sequentially controlled. CONSTITUTION:A screw conveyer carries vials at regular distances. A capper head A is equipped with a torque limiter T1 to tighten caps with a constant torque, and is moved up and down and left and right by a slide shaft 20 and a head slide lever 7 each following cams. A bottle grip part B is brought in action to leave a vial when a slide lever 44 reaches a specified stroke. In a cap delivery device, a rodless cylinder 70 is moved to the position of a cap chute 62, a cylinder 68 brings up a take-out lever 63 to take out a cap and returns, and a cylinder 69 turns the take-out lever 63. The torque limiter, a cylinder 41, which holds and release vials, the cylinders 68 and 69 and the rodless cylinder 70 of the cap delivery device, and others are sequentially controlled by a CPU.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION [Field of Industrial Application] The present invention relates to an automatic capper for automatically camping containers such as pharmaceutical vials and cosmetic vials with a constant torque.

[Conventional technology]

When capping drug vials, an automatic machine is used to cap a large number of vials in an assembly line, but in order to maintain quality, the tightening torque is usually constant. As such an automatic capper (automatic cap tightening machine), there is a device as shown in the plan view of FIG. 17, for example. That is, the vials conveyed from the conveyor 90 are introduced into the artificial star foil 92 at regular intervals by the screw conveyor 91, and are sent from the hoshiper 93 through the parts feeder 94 while moving the circular conveyor. The structure is such that the cap is placed on the vial through a chute 95 via a cap lever (not shown), is rotated by an air chuck 97 under the cap head 96 and tightened with a constant torque, and is ejected through the exit rotor wheel 98. It has become. As described above, the so-called rotary type automatic capper described above has been used as the automatic capper. This rotary-type automatic capper is suitable for camping containers containing products that are mass-produced with the same standard such as vial size, height, and cap size, but in reality, small quantities containing products with different sizes, etc.
It is often used to cap containers containing a wide variety of products.

[Problem to be solved by the invention]

As mentioned above, when using the container as a capper for small quantities and a wide variety of products with different sizes, the inlet star wheel 92, outlet star wheel 98, etc. must be replaced each time, which requires extremely complicated work. . In addition, this rotary automatic capper has a curved conveyance path for the vial, and the driving device for each mechanical part is complicated, requiring a correspondingly large number of parts, and most of the parts need to be adjusted every time the vial is changed. In addition, line cappers have recently been manufactured that allow vials brought in from a screw conveyor to flow in a straight line and are automatically capped before being sent out as they are, but since they have a relatively large number of electrical components, it takes time to make adjustments and the production cost of the device is high. .

This invention was made to solve the above problems, and its purpose is to provide a machine that automatically caps vials while conveying them in a straight line, and which accurately and automatically repeats the same operation. To provide an automatic line capper by sequence control that is free from failure and highly reliable.

[Means to solve the problem]

That is, in order to solve the above problems, the present invention has an automatic line capper that moves vertically and horizontally using a vial transport device that transports vials at regular intervals and a lever drive mechanism using a cam, and caps vials with a constant torque. A capper head equipped with a torque limiter, a drive source for gripping and releasing the vial, a bottle grip part that moves reciprocally by a lever drive mechanism using a cam, a cap ejecting lever, and a drive source that moves the cap ejecting lever up and down. A cap ejecting device including a plate and a drive source for reciprocating the cap ejecting lever at a fixed angle, and a drive source for reciprocating the entire cap ejecting device between the capper head and the cap supply section, is arranged along the linear flow of the vial, and the torque limiter, a drive source for gripping and releasing the vial, each drive source for the cap removal device, a drive source for reciprocating movement, etc. are sequentially controlled. do.

[For production]

The automatic line capper according to the present invention, which consists of the above-mentioned means, repeatedly supplies the cap to the vial flowing at a constant speed and tightens the cap in the cap by mechanical operation.The operation will be explained sequentially using the reference numerals in the attached drawings as follows. Become. That is, (1) the vials (2), which were kept at regular intervals on the screw conveyor 1 of the vial conveying device, are conveyed to the capper spatula F A (7) position. Meanwhile, the cap take-out lever 63 operates to take out the cap C under the cap chute 62. Then, the cap take-out lever 63 is moved slightly upward by the driving source to take out the cap C. During this time, the torque limiter T+ attached to capper head A performs operations such as lowering, moving to the right, and rotating to tighten the cap of the previous vial ■.

(2) The vials (2) are sequentially conveyed at a constant speed toward the capper head A, while the cap removal device that takes out the caps comes to the capper head.

■Meanwhile, the torque limiter TI (ie, capper head) that has finished capping the previous vial returns. The cap take-out lever 63 is rotated by a constant angle by a driving source.

(2) The torque limiter T1 of the capper head A comes down and grips the cap above the cap removal lever 63.

(2) The vials V are sequentially conveyed at a constant speed in the direction of the capper head A until they come a little in front of the torque limiter T1.

Then, the torque limiter T1 moves upward while holding the cap C.

- Immediately after the cap is taken up, the cap take-out lever 63 moves to the position of the cap shoes 1 and 62. The vials are sequentially conveyed toward the capper head at a constant speed until they come under the torque limiter T, but just at that moment, the torque limiter T1 descends, places the cap on the mouth of the vial, and begins to rotate.

■Torque limiter T rotates while descending and moves while capping the vial until a constant torque is reached. The vials (2) are conveyed one after another, but the hotolgrisop section B also releases the vials and returns to its original position, and the operations (2) to (3) are repeated.

〔Example〕

Hereinafter, specific embodiments of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 is a front view of the automatic line capper according to the present invention, FIG. 2 is a view taken along arrow P in FIG. 1, FIG. 3 is a plan view, and FIG. 4 is a sectional view taken along line X-X in FIG. be.

Reference numeral 1 denotes a screw conveyor for conveying vials to be capped at regular intervals. That is, the screw conveyor 1 is operated by the motor M2 (see FIGS. 1 and 4).
This conveyor is driven by the gear in the bevel box 80 driven by the bevel box 80 and the tamming gear in the hevel hooks 81 and 82, and transports the vial to a position below the capper head, which will be described later. For example, in the case of the embodiment, four vials are capped at the same time, so the cap is rotated four times in one cycle (the cycle from taking out the cap to capping the vial and returning to the original position).

In Fig. 1, part A is a capper head, which consists of a vertical slide plate 2 to which a rail 2a is fixed in the vertical direction, and a plate to which a guide 3a for moving on the rails of the vertical slide plates 1 and 2 is fixed. 3, and a horizontal plate 5 that slides the entire vertical slide plate 2 in the left-right direction.

Further, the motor base 4 includes a motor M;
A torque limiter T1 is mounted on the tip of the torque limiter T1 to tighten the cap with a constant torque.
2 is installed. A guide 5 is attached to the horizontal plate 5.
a is fixed and moves left and right on a rail 6a fixed to the frame 6. 7 is a head slide lever for driving the horizontal play 1-5.

Next, the drive mechanism of this head slide lever 7 will be explained. The head slide lever 7 is driven by a motor M2, and as shown in FIG. Rotational torque is transmitted to. A head slide lever cam 13 is fitted onto the main shaft 11, and the arm 1
A rotor 15 provided at the tip of the cam 4 moves in a cam groove formed in the cam 13. In this way, the metal fitting 17 pivotally attached to the connecting metal fitting 16 moves on the rail 18, and causes the head slide lever 7 to swing, thereby causing the horizontal plate 5, that is, the capper head portion A, to swing left and right according to the cam curve.

Reference numeral 20 denotes a slide shaft for sliding the motor base 4, that is, the capper head portion A up and down. That is,
This is a shaft that is moved up and down when tightening the cap with the torque limiter T1.

Next, the drive mechanism of this shaft 20 will be explained.

As shown in FIG. 4, a separate sprocket 21 is fitted onto the main shaft 11, and rotational torque is transmitted to the sprocket 23 via a chain 22. Then, the rotation l/rook is transmitted to the shaft 25 via the spline shaft 24. A capper head vertical cam 26 is fitted on this shaft 25, and a head vertical bar 30 is driven up and down according to the cam curve of the cam 26 via a lever 28 and a lever 29 fitted on the same shaft 27. . That is, as shown in FIGS. 5 and 6, from the lever 29 to the connecting fitting 3
The slide shaft 20 is fixed to the head vertical bar 30 via the capper head vertical cam 26.
This causes the slide shaft 20 to be driven up and down. Furthermore, an arm 32 is fixed to the tip of the slide shaft 20, and the motor base 4 is attached to the arm 32.
A top and bottom flat parr 33 is fixed to the top and bottom.

The movement of the slide shaft 20 according to the cam curve of the capper head up/down cam 26 and the head slide lever cam 13 of the capper head section is performed when the cap C is placed on the vial 2 and the torque limiter T attached to the motor base 4 is moved. It moves in accordance with the movement of the vial V while descending.

Incidentally, the motor M3 shown in FIG. 4 is a drive motor for height adjustment. That is, as shown in FIG. 6, a gear 35 is fitted to a shaft 34 driven by the motor M3, and by rotating a gear 36 that meshes with the gear 35, the shaft 34 is driven by the motor M3. The stroke of the slide shaft 20 is adjusted by eight revolutions.

Section B shown in FIG. 2 is a bottle grip section.

This bottle grip part includes a cylinder 41 installed on a plate 40, a bottle grip base 42 that is moved back and forth (as viewed from FIG. 1) by the cylinder 41,
It is composed of grippers 43, 43, etc. provided on the upper part of the bottle grip base 42, and is designed to adjust the stroke of the cylinder 41 according to the size of the vial (2).

Further, the cylinder 41 operates when the bottle grip slide lever 44 reaches a predetermined stroke (that is, when it comes to the rightmost position in FIG. 1) to release the vial V from the bottle grip portion.

A metal fitting 45 is fixed to the plate 40, and a shaft 46 is attached to the metal fitting 45 and the bottle grip slide lever 44.
is pivotally mounted, and by driving the bottle grip slide lever 44, the bottle grip section is slid from side to side (as viewed from FIG. 1) via the plate 40.

Next, the drive mechanism of this bottle grip slide lever 44 will be explained. The bottle grip slide lever 44
is driven by a motor M2, and as shown in FIG. 4, a sprocket 9 is fitted to the drive shaft 8 of the motor M2, and rotational torque is transmitted by a chain 10 to a sprocket 12 fitted to the main shaft 11. be done. A bottle grip slide lever cam 47 is fitted onto the main shaft 11, and a rotor 49 provided at the tip of an arm 48 moves in a cam groove formed in the cam 47.

The metal fitting 51 pivotally attached to the connecting metal fitting 50 in this way is attached to the rail 5.
2 while moving the bottle grip slide lever 44.
is oscillated to drive the plate 40, that is, the bottle grip part B, left and right according to the cam curve. 54 is a guide fixed to the plays 1 to 40 for this purpose, and 55 is a rail fixed to the frame 56 side.

As can be seen from the above explanation, the capper head section is reciprocated vertically and horizontally by driving the motor M2, and the 1-luck limiter T mounted on the motor base 4
2 will cap the vial ■. Further, the bottle grip section grips the vial (2) by the movement of the bottle grip slide lever 44, and when the vial (2) is capped, it is released and returned to its original position.

Next, the cap removal device will be explained.

FIGS. 7 and 8 are a plan view and a front view showing details of the portions shown in FIG. 3 that supply a lift from the hopper 60 storing a large number of caps, the parts feeder 61, and the cap chute 62 to the cap take-out lever 63. . The cap removal lever 63 is attached to a plate 65. Further, the cap take-out lever 63 has a cap button 64 attached to its tip for placing a cap on. The cap removal lever 63 is also pivotally connected to a metal fitting 67 that is pivotally connected to the rod 66, and each cylinder 68 (four in the embodiment) installed on the lower side of the pretro 5 allows each lever to be independently operated. It is designed to move up and down a certain distance.

Reference numeral 69 denotes a cylinder for rotating the cap take-out lever 63 by a predetermined angle, which is shown by the two-dot chain line in FIG. This cylinder is used to rotate the cylinder.

Reference numeral 70 denotes a rodless cylinder to which a cap take-out lever 63, a cylinder 69, etc. are attached, and the pre-retro 5 is reciprocated between the lower position of the torque limiter T1 and the lower position of the gear/knob chute 62. It is something. For this reason, the plate I-65 and the one-component dress link 70 are connected by a frame holder I-71.

As can be seen from the following explanation, in this cap removal device, the rodless cylinder 70 is connected to the cap shoe 1-6.
2, lift the cap take-out lever 63 upwards with the cylinder 68 to take out the cap, return to the left position as shown in FIG. The action is to rotate the .

As described above, the automatic line capper according to the present invention has the following features:
A screw conveyor that transports vials at regular intervals, a capper head that moves up and down and left and right, a bottle grip that moves back and forth from side to side while gripping and releasing vials, a cap removal device that moves back and forth between the cap chute and the capper head, etc. Consists of. The torque limiter T1, the cylinder 41 of the drive source that grips and releases the vial V, and the cylinder 6 of the cap removal device.
8.69 and rodless cylinders 0, etc. are processed by the CPU in the sequence Hill '<.

Next, the operation of the automatic line capper of the present invention having the above structure will be explained with reference to FIGS. 9 to 15.

(2) The screw conveyor 1 transports the vials at regular intervals to the position of the capper head (torque limiter TI). Meanwhile, the cap take-out lever 63 operates to take out the cap under the cap chute 62. Then, the cap take-out lever 63 is moved a little towards ``2'' by the cylinder 68 to take out the cap. In this case, a sensor (not shown) is located at the screw conveyor 1 to determine the presence or absence of the vial (2). The cap removal lever 63 in a position where there is no vial is not operated. The torque limiter T performs operations such as lowering, moving to the left, and rotating to tighten the cap (FIG. 9).

(2) The vials are conveyed one after another at a constant speed toward the gear head, and on the other hand, the cap take-out lever 63 with the cassop C placed on the take-out cap button 64 comes to the left capper head position (FIG. 10).

(2) The vials are sequentially conveyed toward the capper head at a constant speed, while the torque limiter T1, which has capped the previous vial (2), returns.

The cap removal lever 63 is rotated by a certain angle by the cylinder 69 (FIG. 11).

■The vials■ are sequentially moved toward the gear collar head at a constant speed (fastest) and come under the limiter T1.

Then, the chuck T2 of the torque limiter T comes down and grasps the second cap C of the cap take-out lever 63 (FIG. 12).

The vials ■ are sequentially conveyed toward the capper head at a constant speed until they come a little in front of the torque limiter T1. Then, the chuck T2 of the torque limiter T moves upward while gripping the cap C (FIG. 13).

(2) Immediately after the cap C is taken up, the cap take-out lever 63 moves to the position of the cap chute 62. The vials V are sequentially conveyed in the direction of the capper head at a constant speed and come under the limiters 1 to 1, but just at that time, the chuck T2 of the torque limiter T1 descends and the cap C is placed on the mouth of the vial 2, which rotates (Fig. 14). ).

(1) The I-luke limiter T rotates while descending, and is moved to the vial (2) while rotating the cap C until a constant torque is reached (Fig. 15).

Then, the vials (2) are conveyed one after another, and the bottle grip part also releases the vial (2) and returns to its original position (-), and the operations shown in FIGS. 9 to 15 are repeated.

FIG. 16 is a diagram showing the trajectory of the torque limiter T1 between the capper heads.

One embodiment of the automatic line capper according to the present invention has been described above, but in the above embodiment, some of the constituent parts may be changed to other parts. For example, screw conveyor 1
may be replaced with another conveyance device, or the combination of a sprocket and chain serving as the rotational torque transmission means may be replaced with a combination of a timing pulley and a timing belt. Further, the cylinder etc. may be an air cylinder, an oil cylinder, or a linear motor. A rodless cylinder may be used in combination with a pinion and a rack.

〔Effect of the invention〕

Since the automatic line capper according to the present invention has the structure as described in detail above, it is possible to cap a vial automatically and accurately by repeating the same operation by mechanical operation. Since the automatic line capper according to the present invention incorporates relatively many mechanical operations with little electrical operation, timing deviations are less likely to occur, the operation is accurate, there are few failures, and the reliability is high. Furthermore, compared to the rotary type, it has many unique advantages such as fewer parts, lower cost, and the ability to easily adjust the size of the vial.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

Fig. 1 is a front view of the automatic line capper according to the present invention, Fig. 2 is a view taken in the direction of arrow P in Fig. 1, Fig. 3 is a plan view, and Fig. 4 is a front view of an automatic line capper according to the present invention.
The figure is a sectional view taken along the line X-X in FIG. 1, FIG. 5 is a partial sectional view of the drive unit that moves the slide shaft up and down, and FIG. 6 is a partial front view of the head slide lever that drives the slide shaft. FIG. 7 is a detailed plan view of the hopper that stores a large number of caps shown in FIG. 3, the parts feeder, and the parts that take out the caps from the cap chute and supply the caps to the lever;
8 is a front view thereof, FIGS. 9 to 15 are explanatory diagrams of the operation when capping a vial with the automatic line capper according to the present invention, FIG. 16 is a diagram showing the trajectory of the capper head, and FIG. 17 is a diagram showing the conventional line capper. FIG. 3 is a plan view of a rotary automatic capper. 1-Screw conveyor 2-Vertical slide plate 3-Plate 4-Motor head 5-Horizontal plate 6-Frame 7-Head slide lever 11-Main shaft-13
--Cam for head slide lever 20-Cam for slide shaft capper head up and down 29- Lever 30-Head up and down bar arm 33-Upper and lower flange i/hub plate 41-Cylinder gripper--Slide lever for bottle grip Cam hopper for bottle grip slide lever 62 - Cap chute cap removal lever Cap button 65 - Pre-tronde 68. 69 - Cylinder Rondress cylinder M2, M3 - Motor torque limiter T2 - Chuck Applicant Ougi Machine Manufacturing Co., Ltd. Representative Director Tatsu Fujiwara Male agent Patent attorney Maki Kawasaki 2nd, M., 20--Slide shaft 32-111 Arm 63-1--Cap removal lever 64--Cap button 4--Motor base 29-- To the head slide lever 30-1--Grot top and bottom 31--Connector 32-111 Arm 33-111 Vertical flat bar 34...Drive shaft procedure (method) A detailed front view of the part that takes out caps from a large number of stored hoppers, pack feeders, and cabs and supplies them to the conveyor.゜Relationship with the person making the amendment case

Claims (1)

[Claims] (1) A vial transport device that transports vials at regular intervals, a capper head that moves vertically and horizontally using a lever drive mechanism using a cam and is equipped with a torque limiter that caps the vial with a constant torque, and a capper head that grips and grips the vial.
A bottle grip part that is provided with a drive source for releasing the bottle and is moved back and forth by a lever drive mechanism using a cam, a cap take-out lever, a plate that is attached with a drive source that moves the cap take-out lever up and down, and a drive that reciprocates the cap take-out lever at a constant angle. a drive source for reciprocating the entire cap ejecting device between the capper head and the cap supply section, the entire cap ejecting device being arranged along the linear flow of the vial, An automatic line capper characterized in that the torque limiter, a drive source for gripping and releasing the vial, each drive source for the cap removal device, a drive source for reciprocating movement, etc. are controlled in sequence.