Throughout its 45-year history, the Dutch company Weighpack evolved from a small workshop manufacturing weighing machines for fasteners and other hardware products to a leading company that design, manufactures, install and service complete packaging lines for the hardware industry. Weighpack’s Packaging machine program features more than 50 different machines and is constantly being improved. The complete portfolio reaches from automated bin feed systems, vibratory feed hoppers, weighing and counting machines, case packers, palletizers, bag makers, transport conveyors, box formers and closers, and much more. Besides the standard machines, almost all packaging lines are suit-to-fit, custom build systems. Their purpose is to offer their clients, a wide range of high-quality products, with the best quality/price ratio in the market. Presently Weighpack is the most renowned and used brand on the market.
For a market leading fastener supplier in the US, Weighpack in the Netherlands designed and build a blister packaging line to suit their high demands on packaging quality and performance. The company realized that between the production of components and the storage and the transport there is another important process: the process of dosing and packaging. It is a specialist field, which focuses on efficiency and accuracy the Weighpack company was invited to work out a suit to fit solution for the blister packing process of fasteners from product infeed up to check weighing, sealing and printing.
As a specialist in the development and production of complete packaging lines for bulk hardware Weighpack proposed a client-specific solution that results from over forty-five years’ experience and innovative approach.
The original RFQ cited; “The design, fabricate, install and commission a fully automated and integrated packaging line with a single point of control capable of portioning and placing customer’s product inside the preformed plastic clamshell blisters, resulting in retail ready sealed package”. Weighpack did develop a tailor-made bag packing line. Thus, creating a system that meets the customer’s requirements and wishes about flexibility and offers the possibility to grow with the company.
One integrated system:
Weighpack has a unique product specialty: processing products with a small volume and a heavy weight. The Weighpack strength is that they can keep the entire process in one hand, from the initial advice up to and including service and maintenance. All components in the packaging line of Weighpack have been optimized and integrated. This means that all partial solutions ‘communicate’ with each other and the peripheral equipment. This has many advantages for a trouble-free operation and efficient maintenance. At Weighpack the customer did find all know-how in the field of machine engineering, mechatronics and control technology, both PLC and PC. It resulted in a system that was built up and tested at the Weighpack company’s plant in The Hague.
The packaging line configuration that is capable of packing two products in one blister (duo-packs) starts at the infeed of the products were the customer empties internal bins in one of the two main Storage Hoppers. The product flow from the two 1200 kg/2600 lb. capacity Vibratory Hoppers are regulated from special Vibratory Pre-Weigh Trays, who stream the products to the Z-shape inclined cleated belt conveyors with wave edge to feed the two 14-Head Combination Weighers which can generate an output of up to 50 blisters per minute (!).
The stacked clamshell blisters are automatically de-stacked by a blister dispenser and fed into a servo drive pocket conveyor. The pocket conveyor is indexing 4 blisters every cycle, presenting 4 boxes simultaneously to the filling point under the two multi-head weighing systems. Before the first product filling station, a paper instruction card is placed on the bottom of the open and empty blisters.
The first product filling point is equipped with an orientation magnet to align longer steel fasteners in the narrow containers. The second weigher and filling point is used for the filling of the randomly placed, secondary products (wall plug, anchors etc.).
In the following indexing sequence, the lids of the clamshell blisters are mechanically closed and check weighted. After the quantity check the closed lids receive a 3-dot temper evident sealing from an ultra-sonic sealing unit. The following laser printer completes the packaging cycle by branding the blisters with a production date coding. A formation pusher at the end of the line pushes 4 boxes at the same time to a packing table were the rest of the case packing and palletizing is performed manually.
