Controlled capping

New from the inside out, Pneumatic Scale’s Series SC capper is said to be the first servo-driven capper from a United States manufacturer. The machine’s controls components, from Elau, include servo motors and drives and a PacDrive® controller that integrates logic and motion control.

The machine culminates a 10-year wait for vice president of engineering Mike Mihalik of the Cuyahoga Falls, OH machinery builder. “We’ve been waiting that long for the right servo technology,” says Mihalik. “The PacDrive is uniquely designed for rotary turrets to make communications and wiring much simpler.” It can handle up to 99 servos and 200 input/outputs, according to Elau.

Available in several models, the capper is as distinguished by what it doesn’t have as by what it has. What it doesn’t have is a large main gear that drives the spindles that screw down the caps. It also has 15% fewer parts and half the wiring of mechanical models. And there’s no magnetic clutches that characterize most capping machines.

Its servo-driven design greatly improves torquing accuracy, which has dropped from 10% all the way down to 0.5%.

“Tighter application torque produces better removal torque,” Mihalik points out. “End users will see fewer loose caps and leakers and fewer caps that are ‘impossible’ for consumers to get undone.”

It even offers torque profiling, which Mihalik says permits users to pinpoint torquing programming for individual heads. That means the capping process can be optimized for the particular cap and container.