At the 2024 Craft Brewer Conference, held at the Venetian Expo in Las Vegas, Nev., Econocorp, a provider of cartoning and case packing equipment unveiled its latest technology on its Spartan Beverage Cartoner.
The cartoner now features a fully adjustable, lattice-style crank gating system that is designed to decrease the changeover time from one diameter of can to another so that the machine can handle beverage sizes ranging from traditional beer cans to the tall sleek cans of traditional Seltzers. The gates, lanes, and spacers are all designed to move automatically to fit the correct product run.
This new system was put in place to address the needs of customers who expressed a need for less time-consuming changeovers and that was easier to manage. Econocorp’s Director of Operations, Sam Goldberg, says this new gating system should decrease changeover times by about half of what it currently takes to run from one can size to another.
This fully automated system is set up to handle beverage packs ranging from four to 24 within standard configurations and is also fully configurable for cans outside of standard size ranges. The machine can be plugged directly into upstream fillers and/or act as an offline variety pack system, according to Goldberg.
The Spartan also comes standard with an Allen Bradley PLC, a servo, a touchscreen human-machine interface system (HMI), and a LinMot actuator acting as infeed. The actuator allows Econocorp to set home positions for different size boxes and pack patterns at the touch of a button.
Optional features include a variety pack system that allows operators to hand load variety packs offline or to have the machine plugged in upstream, as well as programmable Nordson guns to facilitate runs with different style cartons that may require some variation in the glue pattern, which also saves time.
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