Descon Conveyor Systems and Consultants (Newmarket, Ontario, Canada) manufactured the air conveyor that takes LeNature’s bottles from bulk depalletizing down to filling. Elsewhere in the line, various belt and roller conveyors were made by Hytrol (Jonesboro, AR). Near the end of the line is a powered roller conveyor from Busse (Randolph, WI), followed by a hydraulic pallet lift from Advance Lifts (St. Charles, IL) that lifts full pallets about three feet, up to the level of the warehouse floor. Last but not least in the conveyor configuration is Busse’s sister company, Arrowhead Systems (Oshkosh, WI), which supplied all tabletop and matte-top conveyor segments in the line. That includes a pressure-less lane combiner, which single files empty bottles into the air conveyor, and a rinser/lowerator.
Arrowhead also was responsible, as controls integrator on the line, for knitting the many pieces of the line together. Each major piece of equipment is controlled by its own PLC. But machines all up and down the line communicate freely among each other along an Allen-Bradley Data Highway Plus® network from Rockwell Automation (Milwaukee, WI). Because upstream equipment “knows” the operating status of equipment downstream, machine speeds are automatically ramped up or down not independently but according to overall line conditions and requirements.
See the story that goes with this sidebar: Bottling built for the future
