The system’s unique design gently diverts a rejected bottle off to a reject lane so that the bottle remains upright and does not spill its contents and contaminating the packaging line. Additionally, the bottle identified as failing one or more quality conditions remains in positive control all the way from its station within the machine to the reject lane.
The system rejects bottles for improper torque, missing cap, high cap, and/or cocked cap. The system also rejects bottles if the under-cap liners are missing. Every bottle must pass these quality checks before it is allowed to leave the machine.
Electronic torque control, machine vision, and various other sensor technologies are used in the inspection portion of the system. With failsafe logic, even the sensor hardware is monitored for proper functionality. Using failsafe logic, all bottles are tagged as “faulty” entering the machine and each inspection criteria must be satisfied as “good” before the system will allow a bottle to be discharged from the machine to the next downstream operation.
The high speed is the result of utilizing state-of-the-art linear motors for high-velocity, precise motion actuation of the multi-finger rejection portion of the system. The linear motor actuators smoothly guide the bottle to the rejection lane without holding up or otherwise interfering with the bottle next in line. The use of linear motors in place of previously-used pneumatic cylinders has helped attain the new level of performance in speed and accuracy.
