Bosch Packaging Technology will launch its flexible Biscuit on Pile packaging system for plain, sweet and savory biscuits in North America at Pack Expo, Las Vegas from September 25 to 27, 2017.
The system consists of a vibratory infeed, a new, innovative magazine feeder, a new horizontal flow wrapper as well as a new integrated topload cartoner.
The Smart Pile Loader (SPL) is a magazine feeder developed for gentle product handling, full product control and continuous product flow.
By significantly reducing the pusher’s speed at the point of extraction and continuously guiding the product, this new solution enables higher production speeds.
Handling biscuits on conventional magazine feeders limits the number of products per stack to the number of extraction magazines, or a multiple of it.
The new SPL feeder enables manufacturers to select the desired stack count via the human machine interface (HMI) independently from the number of incoming lanes (lane flexibility) and allows for easy changes to package configurations.
“The ability to change the size, shape or number of biscuits in the pack is an important factor for manufacturers”, says Meer. “To support this need,
“The Bosch SPL feeder is designed for stacking two to seven products and grouping one to four stacks to create multiple package configurations ranging from one to 28 biscuits per package,” says product manager Kelly Meer.
Additionally, due to its ability to automatically and dynamically extract a variable number of cookies from each magazine, the SPL feeder compensates when the product supply from the oven to the packaging system varies.
By extracting missing cookies from one of the other lanes to build a complete stack, this feature also supports automatic lane balancing.
Manufacturers can then equip their production with fewer lanes, and automatically balance those lanes for increased uptime.
In order to accommodate for inconsistencies in product thickness resulting from the baking process, the stacking mechanism can be adjusted via the HMI.
This can be accomplished during production without stopping the system, resulting in higher overall equipment effectiveness.
Easier operation and maintenance
In the next step, the collated stacks are transferred to the Pack 403 horizontal flow wrapper.
To simplify daily operation, all film rollers are numbered sequentially to make film threading more intuitive.
The Pack 403 is also available with a feature to precisely measure and control film tension, resulting in fewer jams and consistent package appearance during production speed changes and during machine starts and stops.
For clearing jams and cleaning the crimpers, the Pack 403 features a manual hand wheel to rotate the cutting head, allowing easier service and maintenance while avoiding contact with the hot sealing surfaces.
Improved sealing and easier format changes
To enhance seal integrity and package appearance, the crimper set-up on the Pack 403 horizontal flow wrapper has been refined to simplify the process of alignment and pressure adjustment.
This was achieved by implementing repeatable locking mechanisms for the finer pitch gap adjustment on the cross sealing station and easy-to-read pressure gauges on the fin seal units.
