Does your company specialize in selling spices, nutritional supplements, hot sauce, soda, jelly, or other products that you must put into plastic bottles, glass containers, cans, bags, pouches, or other types of packaging? If so, you must integrate special filling machines into your production lines.
You also need to know the answer to the question, “How do filling machines work?” so you can carry out the filling process daily. Getting the right amount of product into your company’s containers is important, regardless of whether you sell a semi-solid or liquid product to customers. Consumers expect a certain standard, and it’s up to you to uphold it.
Ready to learn how filling machines work? Keep reading to discover everything you need to know about filling machines and the key role they play in your company’s success.
Infeed and Container Handling
Before you can begin filling containers with the products your company produces, you’ll need to place the containers you plan to use for them into your filling machines. It’s difficult to break down the answer to the question, “How does the filling machine work?” without loading it with containers first. Here is how you should handle these containers while adding them to a filling machine.
Manual vs. Automated Loading
A filling machine will offer either manual or automated loading. If your company only produces a small amount of a particular product, you can get away with manually loading your containers into this machine. Otherwise, automated loading will make the filling process more seamless by calling for your employees to do less work.
All your employees will need to do is ensure you have a steady supply of containers near your machine. Doing so automatically adds these containers to the mix as necessary so they can get filled with your product.
Container Orientation and Positioning
No matter how you load your company’s containers into a filling machine, you’ll need them aligned properly to fill up with product. Thankfully, a filling machine will take care of strategically positioning containers during the filling process by utilizing the following:
- Conveyor belts
- Guide rails
- Belts
If your containers aren’t filling up all the way, you can probably put the blame on one of these parts. You may need to arrange to have a filling machine serviced to get it working like it’s supposed to again.
Product Dosing and Filling
When your company was first getting off the ground, you may have handled product dosing and filling yourself. However, as companies grow, they can’t always keep up with the demand for products by dealing with product dosing on their own. A filling machine can help in this area by making product dosing simpler for your company and its employees.
Methods for Different Products
Several different filling mechanisms can complete the filling process. Your company should select the right mechanisms based on which products you plan to put into containers. Here are the top options:
- Gravity fillers: Ideal for free-flowing liquids and the bottle-filling process
- Pump fillers: Ideal for slightly thicker liquids with varying viscosities
- Piston fillers: Ideal for the thickest liquids and semi-solids (think creams and pastes) with different viscosities
You may also want to consider using bottom-up pressure fillers if your company uses filling machines for foamy products. It’ll prevent these products from reacting too much during the filling process by adding products to containers from the bottom.
Ensuring Accurate Doses
Every container your company produces should have the same amount of product inside it. You can ensure accurate doses by correctly setting up a filling machine and using containers designed to hold a certain product.
If your filling machine isn’t delivering accurate doses, it could indicate that repairs need to be made to it immediately.
Fill Verification and Quality Control
Your company’s containers all need the same amount of product in them, but you don’t necessarily need to worry about checking to see whether this is the case yourself. Instead, you can rely on a filling machine to keep tabs on this for you. Here is how the machine works to your advantage to complete this important job.
Verifying Fill Accuracy
The average filling machine has sensors that verify containers have been filled up with the right amount of product. It closely monitors all the containers that come down your company’s production lines and alerts you in the event that any are overfilled or underfilled with the product.
As long as your vertical or horizontal filling machines are working correctly, most of your containers should have the proper amount of product in them. However, some containers might not have enough product, while others could contain too much.
Creating Rejection Systems
If any of your containers don’t have the right amount of product in them, a filling machine will help you weed them out and send them to the rejection pile. This could save you from encountering legal issues by getting caught selling underweight containers. It can also keep your customers happy by not shortchanging them when they buy a container of your company’s product.
Container Closure System
When a container reaches this point in the filling process, you can start preparing to send it out to stores that sell your company’s products or even directly to customers. Before sending your products anywhere, though, you’ll need to arrange to close your containers and seal them shut.
Those wondering, “How does the filling machine work?” will love hearing that a filling machine can help in this regard, too.
Closure Methods
Your company has a few options when it comes to which method you might want to use to close containers once your products are inside them. These options are as follows:
- Capping
- Lidding
- Heat sealing
Choose the appropriate closure method based on what you’ll be putting inside your company’s containers. You should also consider how the closure method you select will impact the look of your products and the cost of manufacturing them.
Integration With Filling Line
A filling machine won’t work alone. Many other machines will surround it and lend a hand throughout the filling process.
For example, there are machines in the filling line that will add labels and other design elements to your company’s containers. A filling machine should integrate into your filling line as a whole to perform its job without slowing down any other machines that will play a part in the process.
Machine Control and Operation
It helps to know the answer to the question, “How does the filling machine work?” when you depend on one or, better yet, more than one to fill up your company’s containers with products. But the beauty of buying a filling machine is that you can count on it to do most of the heavy lifting for you and your employees.
You can maintain total control of a filling machine by making full use of the touchscreen and software that comes included.
Centralized Control Systems
The centralized control system for a filling machine will enable you to control every move it makes. You can use this system to decide how much product you want to add to containers, how quickly you want the machine to fill these containers, and more.
You can also address any issues that might arise with a filling machine from its centralized control system. It should allow you to keep a filling machine up and running so your company doesn’t have trouble hitting production goals.
Efficiency and Automation
If you were to ask your employees to fill containers with your company’s products, you would find yourself at their mercy as far as your production rate is concerned. They might not always operate as efficiently as they should, which could help you cut down on how many containers your company produces.
Filling machines can make your company more efficient by automating the filling process and speeding up your production lines.
Container Discharge and Unloading
After a filling machine finishes filling and sealing containers shut, the only thing left is to discharge them and let them move on to the next step in the production process. It’s yet another area in which filling machines can optimize the process for your company.
Exiting the Machine
When a filling machine has filled a container, it’ll push it out and send it down the production line. Your company might choose to label it next or put it onto a pallet so you can shrink or stretch wrap it and ship it off to its final destination.
Contact Us To Buy the Right Type of Filling Machine for Your Company
Now that you’ve learned the answer to the question, “How does the filling machine work?” do you believe your company could benefit from adding one or more to your production lines? TDI Packsys can supply you with the filling machines you need to add the right amount of product to every container you sell. Call us today to discover more about filling machines and what they can do for your operation.
