n today's market, automation is the key to success. It leads to more refined control of the manufacturing process and ultimately improves profits. At Tennessee Scale Works, our team of engineers develop and deliver many types of engineered products that help organizations meet the contemporary requirements of manufacturing. One such product is our Box Filling System.

Box Filling Systems can be used for a variety of applications:

• Filling of Powdered or Dry Solid Materials
• Filling of Liquid Materials
• Filling or Counting of Parts
• Filling of any material that can be dispensed mechanically

A typical Box Filling System will consist of: a container or device that dispenses the material, a platform with a scale, a container to receive material and an indicator or digital device that manages the process. Other devices can be included in the process, such as a barcode label printer that connects to the managing device. A system, similar to the one described, was recently built by our engineers for a regional chemical company.

The Box Filling System was custom built to suit their application and consists of:

• A Rice Lake 920i Wall Mounted indicator with 4 remote buttons (JOG, PRINT, START/ABORT, and EMERGENCY STOP).
• 2 Pennsylvania 6400 scales used with a junction box for one output.
• A Rice Lake SST Survivor Thermal barcode printer.

The Application

The application was to fill a segmented box with a glue-like material from a dispersal valve. The 920i, and other indicators like it, typically have digital I/O points that connect to such valves and allow programmatic control of them. The system for our client involved prompting an operator to place a container on a scale platform and pressing a START button. The system automatically tares the scale and starts filling the material into the box till a user-input target weight is achieved. To aid filling the box to the most accurate target weight possible, the system incorporates an automatic preact^* adjustment. This feature infinitely adjusts the shutoff of the flow valve to make the process virtually error free.

Click to enlarge

Once a box is completely filled, the system will print out a preformatted barcode label with the total net weight of the contents. This information could also be stored remotely on a PC or inside an embedded database inside the 920i. The operator then places another box on the scale and starts again. This process, however, could also be automated by the use of a conveyor belt and photo eye.

Safety Features

Design of any engineered product requires features any operator can understand. Emergency shutoff while in a fill is a must and was accomplished by using a universally understood Red Mushroom Button .

Other safety features included

• Box Removal Detection
  If the system detects that the fill container has been removed, it stops the flow of material till the container is present.
• Empty Source Detection
  If the system takes too long to fill a container, then it pauses operation so that operator can investigate the source of the problem such as a "dry bin" or a blocked flow.
• Powered Off Detection
  The system can detect when power was lost and can resume operation even if in the middle of a fill.

Other safety features can include digital input from other devices in the process chain and/or can be customized for your application.

Summary

Tennessee Scale Works has the resources to develop and deliver a solution to fit your filling application needs. More in depth information can be found in our online manual for this system. Click here to download it.

^{* Amount of material in suspension when valve cutoff takes place}