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Start spreading the glues

Miller Brewing efficiently delivers hot-melt glue pellets to multiple glue-dispensing units thanks to an overhead air conveying system.

From a tote resin pellets are vacuumed to an overhead level and then down to as many as three hot-melt units located as far as 1
From a tote resin pellets are vacuumed to an overhead level and then down to as many as three hot-melt units located as far as 1

Picture a beverage plant where bottling and canning lines require multiple hot-melt glue stations for carton and case sealing. Would it be a good thing if hot melt glue pellets at all those stations could be loaded automatically and on demand rather than being scooped from a box by an operator and loaded manually?

Absolutely, says quality area manager Roger Cox of Milwaukee-based Miller Brewing. That’s why he and his colleagues at Miller worked as they did with ALL-CON World Systems (Seaford, DE) to develop such a system at the Eden, NC, Miller brewery where Cox works.

It wasn’t just the labor required in the manual operation that made it undesirable. A powdered slip agent is typically added to hot-melt glue pellets to keep them from sticking to each other. When glue pellets were being loaded manually, this powder sometimes made its way to the glue nozzles and caused the nozzles to clog, says Cox. It was one more reason to find another way of doing things.

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