Motors & Drives Information

For the marketer, who sees the carton as an influential point of entry for the product packaged inside, image is everything.

But the carton is more than just a pretty box that holds product and distills information. As convenience drives consumers' purchasing decisions, cartons designed for functionality are attractive assets. The abundance of packaged kits for health care products or easy-to-prepare meals supports this growing trend.

Because there is no such thing as a simple carton, there is no such thing as a simple cartoning machine. In fact, because cartoners include many moving parts they are riddled with complexity. With carton machinery, the challenge, men, is making sure all of the machine's components are kept in sync. Without precise synchronization, cartoning equipment will jam and a jammed cartoner will disrupt the packaging line, causing time-consuming and expensive downtime.

Electrified cartoners

During the last five years there has been a shift from using mechanical line shaft driven cartoning machines to adopting machines that are electronically line shaft driven. When a cartoner's components are electronically line shaft driven the machine can be made 'stiffer,' producing a more closely coupled, tightly linked system.

According to Dan Throne, food and packaging industry manager for the electric drives and controls division of Bosch Rexroth Corp., changing from a mechanical line shaft to an electronic line shaft shows immediate cartoning equipment benefits including:

1. A reduction in the amount of mechanical components in the machine. Machines are no longer restricted to mechanical gears and cams that link components together.

2. With electronic line shafting, cartoning equipment is programmable and every axis that has a servo motor can be changed on the fly, which means fast changes for package sizes, gluing applications, product placement, filling and conveyor speeds. By using digital servo drives, a controller and a human machine interface (HMI), changes can be made at the touch of a button.

3. Electronic line shafting is simply a more sanitary design. There no longer has to be grease and lube slinging all over the machine and into crevices and gears. Consequently, cartoning equipment can easily be washed down and is more sanitary for food, beverage, pharmaceutical and cosmetic packaging.

The heart of the machine

# posted by Medical Information : 8:41 AM