Related video: Bottling lines bump up nail-polish production
OPI Products, Inc., North Hollywood, CA, is one of the world’s leading suppliers of manicure and pedicure products for professional nail care, including 11 clear nail treatment and finishing products. To meet the ever-growing, worldwide demand for its products, OPI fills one-quarter million 0.5-oz bottles of nail lacquer per day at its North Hollywood plant, on three custom packaging lines.
In this video, OPI’s Start to Finish Base Coat, Top Coat & Nail Strengthener product is filled on one of OPI’s three lacquer-filling lines at 100 bottles/min using an explosion-proof Intrepid FBPC. The Intrepid FBPC is a monobloc filler, ball inserter, plug inserter, and capper from Capmatic, Inc. (www.capmatic.com), installed in January 2007. As are all of OPI’s 0.5-oz nail lacquers, is packaged in a patented, brand-recognizable glass bottle decorated and supplied by Vitro Packaging (www.vitropackaging.com). Custom polypropylene caps with the OPI logo embossed on the top, supplied by Berry Plastics (www.berryplastics.com) and JSN Cosmetic Packaging (www.jsn.com), and OPI’s patent-pending ProWide brush are also standard components for its nail-lacquer products.
The premium treatment is secondarily packaged in a glossy, gabletop carton with a windowed front panel, supplied by Marfred Industries (www.marfred.com). Within the carton, the bottle is held in a thermoform tray, under which rests a folded product leaflet. In October 2007, OPI completely automated the carton-packing process with the addition of a new Stealth™ horizontal continuous-motion cartoner from MGS Machine Corp. (www.mgsmachine.com). The cartoner is fed by a custom bottle-orienting and tray-packing station that uses a vision sensor from Cognex (www.cognex.com). The entire cartoning process is servo motion-controlled with an Allen-Bradley ControlLogix system from Rockwell Automation (www.ab.com).
After being discharged from the cartoner and sharply conveyed into a 90-deg turn, the cartons move past a Domino (www.domino-printing.com) S100 scribing laser, which applies a batch code to the bottom panel of the carton that is used to track product diversion.
