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Pneumatically controlled conveyor guiderails

The Anysize guiderail system automatically adjusts the width of bottle, carton, and case conveyors for greater packaging line flexibility, reduced costs, and better ergonomics.

Multiple positioners can be spaced evenly along the length of conveyor.
Multiple positioners can be spaced evenly along the length of conveyor.

The Anysize™ automated guiderail adjustment system, the brainchild of Flexibility Engineering, solves the biggest problems associated with automatic changeovers, especially consistency over long lengths of conveyor and reliable change-part-free turns.

Comparable systems in the market include manual adjustment systems—which can be slow, labor intensive, and inaccurate—as well as electronic or pneumatic systems. But electric systems are expensive and difficult to maintain, troubleshoot, and repair, plus they consume energy while holding a position. Pneumatic systems, on the other hand, are either not flexible enough for multiple positioning or too expensive to make flexible through servo pneumatics.

Anysize is fully automated, which means no manual adjustments are involved in changeovers. The system is maintenance free, another plus in terms of low labor requirements. Changeover is fast and accurate for greater throughput along the entire length of the conveyor.

Infinite positioning within the one-to-six-inch adjustment range of Anysize provides flexibility in running a wide and changing range of package sizes. On turns, there are no change parts required as Anysize handles infinitely adjustable turns, all automatically. The system also handles multiple lanes and centering via centering rail kits. Power consumption is minimal for greater sustainability, less than one cubic foot of air is required for a typical change over. The Anysize positioning system itself is flexible and can be applied to caps, vials, neck rings, PET bottles and jars, cases, and even to positioning a manifold for an air dry system. Each new recipe can be set up quickly by the maintenance team. Anysize can be easily retrofitted to existing conveyors or installed on new ones. The cost of an Anysize system is calculated by Flexibility Engineering to be about one-third of an electric system and about one-half of a manual system.

When companies had the luxury of running just one or two product sizes on a line, conventional pneumatic positioners were a cost-effective solution for moving guiderails to different positions. As packaging operations added product sizes the limitations of pneumatics became apparent—increasing the number of two-position cylinders and the plumbing associated for each new product size simply wasn’t practical due to cost, space, maintenance, and troubleshooting overhead.

Potential problems
Long runs of conveyors, particularly from case packer to remotely located palletizer, pose significant problems for packaging operations in terms of adjusting guiderails when size formats change. Frequently, these conveyors—sometimes hundreds of feet in length—are located near ceilings and/or in tunnels and are hard to reach. Hand-crank adjustments are problematic because of the labor and time involved in adjusting sections of guiderails over hundreds of feet of conveyor. They also require maintenance to keep all the moving parts working. Everyone who has ever been associated with manual adjustments knows that it usually requires many readjusting tweaks along the entire route to get the settings right. There can be a significant amount of downtime and damaged product during the tweak-the-adjustment-dial-process. When hand adjustments are made while standing on tall ladders or finding footing inside cramped tunnels, there are safety, ergonomic, and morale issues to contend with.

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