In designing high-speed packaging lines, engineers eventually reach a point where they must sacrifice accuracy for speed. U.S. Sugar, with its two high-speed sugar bagging lines, found a way to keep both speed and accuracy.
Each of the two lines forms, fills and seals two-layer paper sacks on equipment from SIG Pack (Raleigh, NC). One line fills at a top speed of two 5-lb bags per second.
Further, accuracy is extremely high, better than ± 2 g on a 5-lb (2곬-g) bag, according to Dave Pelham, chief of bulk shipping, warehousing and packaging. That works out to be a variance of less than a tenth of one percent. U.S. Sugar attributes much of the extremely high filling speed and accuracy to the state-of-the-art controls from Siemens (Alpharetta, GA).
Packaging World recently visited the year-old packaging lines near the Florida Everglades where U.S. Sugar’s plant is located. Long a processor of raw cane sugar, U.S. Sugar had decided to enter the sugar refining and packaging business instead of selling its raw sugar to other firms. That’s what prompted construction of the Clewiston, FL, plant and the packaging lines contained within, which were put into production in March 1999.
On the day of PW’s visit, U.S. Sugar was packing 5-lb bags of sugar for Pillsbury on the line dedicated to that size, which was running at 100 bags/min. The other line packages 2-, 4- or 5-lb sizes, all in multiwall paper sacks.
Triple volumetric filling
Each line starts out by forming double-wall paper sacks from two separate rolls of paper, one for the printed outer ply and the other for the unprinted inner ply. The paper is cut, wrapped around a mandrel and sealed with liquid adhesive. The empty bags are then stuffed in a pocket-style conveyor that brings them to the filling section.
Filling is done via the bulk-and-dribble method. First, bags are filled with the rough amount by three in-line volumetric fillers that fill three bags simultaneously. Next, filled bags are conveyed over an integral checkweigher that checks for gross weight accuracy, feeding back over- or under-weigh information to the volumetric fillers for automatic, on-the-fly adjustment.
The bags continue beneath the high-accuracy top-off filling station. Bags are conveyed over another integral checkweigh station, this one with a reject mechanism.
After filling, bags are closed at a bag closer/sealer station. Finally, bags are conveyed through a Ramsey Icore metal detector (Minneapolis, MN).
Bags then enter a SIG Pack bailer that collates them into eight-bag bundles, which are overwrapped with kraft paper.
Finished bundles are ink-jet coded via a Marsh® large-character, ink-jet printer from Marconi Data Systems (Belleville, IL) before being conveyed into another room for automatic palletizing and stretch wrapping.
Controls make it possible
There are several Siemens components that are used on the packaging line:
• Simatic S7-400 programmable logic controller (PLC).
• Simatic TP27 human-machine interface (a color touchscreen panel).
• 17 servo drives and motors on each machine, 13 of which are electronically synchronized to a master drive.
• a Profibus network that connects all of the above items, along with sensors, valves and other components.
Servo drives and motors enable high speeds and accuracy because they are controlled via precise digital electronic signals instead of physical cams or gears, which cannot transmit as accurately and efficiently at high speeds and are also subject to wear.
The Profibus network connects all of the above components. To shield network communications from electromagnetic noise, SIG Pack chose a fiber-optic link for the Profibus connection between the components on the actual machine and the PLC, housed in a separate electrical cabinet.
SIG Pack confirms that the Siemens “totally integrated automation” concept lives up to its billing, reporting that the different components resulted in streamlined configuring, programming, data management and communications for U.S. Sugar’s machines.
Efficiency edging up
Pelham points out a few examples of the benefits, from U.S. Sugar’s perspective, of tight integration of the servo controls, PLC and HMI: “You can adjust the amount of glue on the fly, or even change position of the [front label graphics] left or right on the fly.”
On the machine that handles 2-, 4- and 5-lb bags, changeover is also relatively simple, says Pelham, though it’s not instantaneous due to some mechanical adjustments that need to be made. Changeover from 2- to 4-lb bags takes six to eight hours; from 4- to 5-lb takes about two hours. Nevertheless, changeover would be even longer were it not for several parameters that can be changed electronically.
“If you have to change bag length,” says Pelham, “you just punch in a number.” U.S. Sugar is pleased with its investment, says Pelham. “We’ve been spoiled by it. We haven’t had older systems to compare it to,” he says. Occasional demonstrations of the equipment to other firms from the sugar industry have confirmed to Pelham that U.S. Sugar chose the right technology. “They come in and look at what we’ve got and say, ‘Wow, this is nice.’”
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