Checkweigher stands alone

Its unusual three-legged stance is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to enumerating all the things that make the Evolution checkweigher a breed apart in a crowded field.

The Evolution’s three-legged stance makes it much easier to balance this checkweigher compared to the competition.
The Evolution’s three-legged stance makes it much easier to balance this checkweigher compared to the competition.

Well established as a leading maker of auger fillers for a variety of products in many different primary packaging formats, Spee-Dee Packaging Machinery has also been making checkweighers for the past 15 years or so. But they were never really positioned as stand-alone pieces of equipment. They functioned more like “local feedback devices” tightly integrated into the auger fillers themselves so that adjustments to fill weights could be made automatically and on the fly.

In every case these checkweighers used a Wipotec Electro Magnetic Force Restoration (EMFR) load cell rather than the strain gauge load cell used commonly in checkweighers found on today’s packaging lines. Why? Because, according to Spee-Dee Director of Electrical Engineering Ron Fojtik, they’re more accurate and faster than anything else out there. (For why this is so, go to pwgo.to/3298) They also offer something called “simple static calibration,” where the weigh cell automatically compensates for changes in temperature so that re-calibration on a daily basis is not required. Last but not least, the Wipotec load cell includes an AutoZero feature between weighments, something customers love because it negates the effect of product dust buildup.

Spee-Dee’s move to stand-alone checkweighers started about four years ago when a customer that had about 40 of Spee-Dee’s integrated checkweighers asked if the firm would look into producing a checkweigher suitable for inspecting carton weights. “So we started building them,” says Fojtik. “They were on the expensive side, but in cases where they could save significant amounts of product giveaway, they paid for themselves quickly.”

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