Scoopcapline Baby Food

Every industry has its specific demands. So it can happen that a customer has to expand its production process to meet these demands. The client at hand is an international player in baby food and they approached us with the following assignment: 'design a layout for our scoop cap production line. It has to be added to an existing can filling line in a way that allows us to choose between normal caps and scoop caps. Furthermore, the new line has to fit within the available space in the building.' A great challenge, it has to fit, both lines have to be operated as efficiently as possible and all required equipment of both the existing and new production line have to be well accessible.

Our engineering team went ahead and developed a layout with a loop in the existing line, a so called bypass, to produce the batches with scoop caps. When the bypass is activated, the cans are elevated by gripper belts and then transported above the existing line.

The cans are subsequently lowered by spiral conveyors. At ground level, the cans recieve a scoop cap, seals and relevant quality checks.

A spiral conveyor brings the cans up again to convey them above the existing line and finally they are lowered back into the existing line by another gripper belt for further processing by the packers.

The conveyors consist of plastic slat chains with a width of 4½ inches. The side guides are made of dry lubricated plastic extrusions with a low coefficient of friction. The conveyors in front of the capper have a stainless steel cover.