Filling, Dosing and Dispensing

Application Example: Filling

Product Used: LAL95 series linear actuator

Objective: Customer is looking to replace the air cylinders on a bottle filling machine. Each machine has between 8 and 36 filling ‘heads’ on a circular ‘turret’.

Their primary objectives are to;

• Improve speed of machine
• Increase positioning accuracy of valve
• Reduce machine down-time for;
  • Re calibrating timing of air cylinders
  • Changing head configuration to change type of liquid being filled

There is a lot of time involved in changing the configuration of the head when a liquid change is required. It takes around 10 minutes per air cylinder to calibrate them due to the change in liquid.

Solution
SMAC Actuators can adjust in seconds and don’t have to be re-calibrated. This results in a significant saving of time and cost, and increases throughput due to a reduction in machine down time.

This same application, and the ability to profile the fill, can be applied to microdispensing.

Application Example: Nitrogen Dosing

Product Used: LCA31 series linear

Problem: Traditionally the pneumatic cylinder is used to control a valve for liquid nitrogen dosing. The pneumatic cylinder gave an impact on the valve when closing. The liquid nitrogen is cooling the valve seal to temperatures that metal seals are like glass and become brittle. Impact damages the closing seal so that they need replacement every half year. This shuts down the line for quite a long time.

Solution: SMAC actuators’ highly repeatable & positioning coupled with high speed allows the user to more precisely & repeatedly control the dosing amount. SMAC actuators also allow for easy change over for different dosing requirements. Another advantage is the life of the SMAC actuators as well as the extended life of the dosing valve, as SMAC’s unique Soft-Land function prevents damage to the valve when closing. This will result in increasing valve’s life time. These features will increase uptime and increase profitability for end user.

SMAC Advantages

• Better force control of liquid nitrogen dose for cost savings on the amount of liquid nitrogen used. (Soft-Land)
• SMAC actuator is fully programmable in force, speed, and position.
• SMAC actuator can be easily set-up and make quick change via GUI to run a different motion profile for the liquid nitrogen valve. No mechanical adjustments required.
• Programmable motion profile dosing valve.
• Dosing valve stroke verification.
• SMAC actuator’s exceptional long-life over 100,000,000 cycles increasing uptime and lowering replacement cost.

Liquid nitrogen dosing diagram

Various dosing volumes

The movement with SMAC actuator. Returning to zero is closing the valve gently.

SMAC actuator can operate over 1100% cycles per minute. Most line speed is 1200/minute.