Repeatable and Tighter Container Filling Response Times with SMAC Actuators

Often, bottles and other similar containers are slightly overfilled to remove the risk of not meeting FDA regulations of having under filled containers. A major contribution to the overfilling is because of lack of repeatability in response time of the filler head from one fill to another fill.

Some of the largest differences in response times (~ +/- 15 ms) are displayed by pneumatically actuated driven filler heads.

The repeatability in response time is considerably reduced (~ +/- 1 ms) with the use of SMAC actuators, enabling users to control their filling process much more efficiently and save products lost due to overfilling.

SMAC Actuators

SMAC actuators offer considerable cost savings due to a more repeatable and much tighter response times. They also enable users to have:

• A fully controlled/programmable motion profile
• Flexibility to change or adjust products and programs at the touch of a button
• A patented soft-land function that assists in the life of the filler valve seat
• Prolonged life for the filler valve actuator (100 million to over 1 billion cycles)

Over hundreds, thousands or millions of containers can provide continuous and a small amount of product savings together with less downtime, energy savings, and faster changeovers that provide significant cost-savings to customers.

These savings allow SMAC actuators to pay for themselves rapidly. In addition, SMAC moving coil actuators provide considerable technical benefits to companies who manufacture and use filling, dosing, and dispensing systems.

SMAC Speed and Accuracy

SMAC dispensing/filling is suitable for:

• Can and Jar filling
• Bottle filling
• Packet dispensing
• Nitrogen dosing
• Nitrogen dispensing
• Micro dosing
• Adhesive dispensing
• Biomed dispensing

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Benefits of SMAC Moving Coil Actuators

SMAC moving coil actuators offer the following benefits:

• Speed/Higher Throughput – Cycle rates up to 2000 CPM and more can be achieved. This is more than two times the speed of ball screw, pneumatic, and other devices
• Repeatable Response Times – Motions within a +/- 1 msec window can be repeated. This is 10 times better than that of pneumatic devices. This makes dispense, fill, or dosed volume much more accurate and almost eliminates the need to OVERFILL.
• Multi-Positioning – Enables users to have several positions set throughout, if required. Some multi-position examples include fine, medium, and course filling positions
• Energy Savings – SMAC actuators are low wattage, all-electric solutions and use much less energy compared to pneumatically driven devices
• Less Downtime – The SMAC direct drive linear motion actuator ensures that there are far less items to wear. This provides users with far more uptime, typically 10 to 100 times that of pneumatics and other devices.
• Long Life – Cycle life is more than 100 million cycles, 10 to 100 times that of pneumatic and other similar products
• Flexibility/Programmability – It is possible to program SMAC actuators to operate a range of motion profiles for use with product variation. Using this feature along with the accurately designed filler valve head, users can easily optimize the filling time by adjusting the motion profile for a specific product flow characteristics. Some examples include chocolate milk, which froths easily compared to water. This can be resolved by designing the positioning of the filler valve so that the milk’s frothing effect as well as the motion profile is reduced during the filling procedure. It would not be as important when it comes to filling water bottles. This step improves the filling times from both container to container variations and product to product variations.

This information has been sourced, reviewed and adapted from materials provided by SMAC Corporation.

For more information on this source, please visit SMAC Corporation.