Contract pharma manufacturer invests in both liquid and tube filling

Filled and capped, bottles are conveyed outside the filling room and move through secondary packaging. The first stop is an ink-jet printer from Domino that prints variable data such as batch and expiration date on the bottle sidewall. A short distance later, an Argus vision system from Laetus reads the bar code to make sure it is correct and legible.

Next is an Etipack pressure-sensitive labeler used for products other than the skin disinfectant, which has all the graphics it needs printed right on the bottle. A cartoner from Cariba is next. Each bottle of skin disinfectant goes in a carton. A checkweigher from Prisma Industriale makes sure the right amount of product is in each container and rejects any containers that are outside of pre-set tolerances. Then comes a second pressure-sensitive labeler, this one from Marchesini. Deploying a number of sensors from Sick that help ensure registration and positioning accuracy, this labeler applies a label required by the Italian Ministry of Health for financial and regulatory purposes. Case packing on a Model PS 510 system from Marchesini system comes next, followed by a Mettler Toledo checkweigher that ensures all cases have the right number of components. Finally, at the end of the line is the newest piece of equipment. Just added in September, it’s a palletizer supplied by CAM.

The complete layout of the new line, including the three hoppers needed to automatically supply plugs and overcaps to the application devices, was designed around the dimensions of the existing space. Typically, it requires three operators. All the RAV Sistemi machines are managed by Siemens PLC and rely heavily on servo motors for their versatility and ease of changeover from one format to the next. In addition to bringing size and format flexibility to Doppel, the new line lets the firm produce up to 50 bottles/min, nearly twice as many as was formerly possible.

Tube filling, too

A similar boost in productivity was gained over on the tube-filling side of things at Doppel when a Marchesini twin-channel linear Millenium 200 tube filler/closer was installed.

“A key to its increased capacity is that it uses two nozzles to fill instead of the single nozzle we had on the machine it replaced,” says Gualazzini. “It also brings us a lot of flexibility in sizes we can fill, anywhere from 3 grams to 100 grams.”
Integral to the filler is a tube feeder that takes tubes from a feed track two at a time and uprights them from a horizontal to a vertical position while placing them into pucks. These pucks carry the tubes around an oval-shaped track that includes the twin filling nozzles, a closing station, variable-data embossing station, and filled tube discharge. Either aluminum tubes or plastic laminations can be filled and closed.

The tube filler’s balcony structure provides maximum accessibility from either front or back, which simplifies cleaning and adjusting. Changeover in tube size is controlled by servo motor and is activated at the Siemens PC touchscreen controller. All sizes are stored in the PC and the operator simply selects the desired size from a menu. The machine then automatically adjusts all parameters accordingly, including puck conveyor height adjustment.

Tubes emerge from the filling operation on two parallel belts. A continuous-motion pick-and-place device has eight vacuum picking heads mounted on an oval-shaped race track. Each head picks two tubes at a time from the belt and places them in the flighted infeed conveyor of a Marchesini MA-255 continuous-motion cartoner. It pushes tubes into a folding carton along with a pre-folded paper insert.

“We have good experience with previous Marchesini models, and this cartoner has all the speed that lets it keep up with the high-speed tube filler,” says Gualazzini. “Also, this cartoner is flexible enough to accept all those formats we do.”
A checkweigher from Prisma is followed by an SL400 pressure-sensitive labeler from Neri, part of the Marchesini Group, that takes care of the label required by the Italian Ministry of Health.

Operated by three people, the new tube line has greatly boosted productivity at Doppel. “We can now do in one shift what it used to take two shifts to do,” says Gualazzini when asked to describe the impact of the new tube-filling line. “With our tube business is growing, the extra capacity is good to have.”