Idea for small home business

We get endless mech' eng' students asking for project ideas.
If you scan back over the last week or so there were at least 3.
Maybe you could ask one of them to work on your problem?
Del

Well this application is very common in the packaging industry. A good place to start would be an internet search of "container filler" or similar to have a look at how it is done and what professional equipment is available (no use reinventing the wheel). From there you can get a better idea of what works and then design something around existing machinery and principles based on your application, scale of packaging quantity, level of experience and budget.

Also look at powder filling equipment manufacturers for more ideas and application notes on working with powder and powder-handling equipment.

You say "medical pots". If the powder is food, medicine, or cosmetic, check out the regulations first. There's a lot of red tape out there.

Also check out the tamper evident packaging you will need in that case. The companies that supply jars and tamper evident lids probably can tell you whether there's equipment available to automate the lid application, or whether you need to design one yourself.

As for alternatives to jars, that depends on the product. What is it for, and how does the package relate to the consumer use of it. Powdered spices, for example, do just as well in a heat sealed plastic package with a reclose zip inside. Tamper evident, less expensive, and cheaper to ship. Again, I would talk to the packaging suppliers first before designing the machine, as they would know about similar or available equipment.

Often second hand equipment is far more cost effective.

I helped a fellow with an old fashon apple cider press on a farm. The customers used to bring their own jugs.

He bought an old milk bag machine that we refurbished. The farm only had single phase so we used a small VFD to provide the 3 phase 60Hz.

Totally packaging system was less than $5000 Canadian.

You might want to look at the equipment sold for re-loading ammunition. It is designed to drop small, measured amounts of powder and is relatively inexpensive. They come in both manual and semi-automated versions.

A plus for using gun powder dispensing equipment is that they are made out of static dissipative materials. If you use PVC pipe or similar plastics, the equipment can build up quite a static charge and cause considerable variation in dispensing. Static dissipative equipment will reduce this variable.

How about using a gun powder drop system used to reload shotgun shells or bullets...

You can used different bushing to increase or decrease the amount needed.... You might be able to use a progressive shotshell reloader to do the whole process.

Good Luck

As far as sealing your jars, if your product can stand the heat, take a lesson from your grandmother (or great-grandmother, depending on your age). People who used to do their own canning would fill the jars with hot product and screw the lid on while the product was still hot. As the product cooled, a natural vacuum was created. Many products on the market today (i.e., baby foods) still use this basic technique. You could possibly fill the jars, heat them, then screw the top on while they are still hot...

Not knowing what your product is, most of the home businesses in our fair city that would require dust control etc are associated with illegal substances. Especially in those 1/4 oz sizes.

Firstly PVC is not suited for delivering medical or food contact materials according to regulations currently in force in most countries.

We had deviced a volumetric dispenser using a simple shuttle valve at the base of a hopper for food pellets. 0.25 oz is a very small quantity (probably a little more than a teaspoon). Unless the powder is very free flowing and fine enough the shuttle valve may not work. If found suitable a manual system can be built for very low cost. I f one is looking for a virtually no cost solution there is a bottle cap 'peg measure' that s used on sugar containers that delivers about one tea spoon every time it is turned upside down. This operation lends itself to low cost mechanization.

GA.

Hi Yusef1,

Thanks for your comment, very instructive. However, I disaggree on one thing, about "the most important one is financing". You are billionair and you have no idea, you use your money to live. You are without money but you have excellent idea, the world is open to you, and you will live with/from your idea.

In business, beancounters come at the end of everything and they want to tell people who created their affair, what and how to do everything. I worked and collaborated in a very profitable company without or very little accounting. When the business turned hands, within months the accounting destroyed the company by imposing too much control and they started budgeting.

See the actual economic disaster, which was created by Wall Street and "accounting experts".

For me as an opinion, research and development, manufacturing and marketing, which includes sales, are important, probably in this order. Finally, let accounting put the numbers together. So, revise the importance and the position of financing.

Remember about lack of money: Wozniack and Job don't have money. Markulla was interested about the idea and supplied the founds, isn't it? Oh, I talk about Apple!

Get a customer with a problem! Create a product or service to solve the problem! You will find the money to supply the solution! Believe me and my name is Gil.

You might look into a custom packaging shop. Let someone else who has already spent the money on their equipment do the packaging for you. The per piece price will be a little higher but you will not be out the expense of your own package line at the start. You can spend your money on building your business and marketing your product line. After you have established your market you can then start looking into in house packaging to lower your costs.

Happy New Year GARRS,

Start your small packaging business with the hand filled system! Your success come from the SALES of your small jars containing the medicinal powder. At the beginning of a business, never or very rarely comes from the process or the machine does the packaging. The product does the miracle!

When the volume of production will become problematic, hard to fill orders, ask someone else to package your medicinal powder.

When really, your volume of sales are really high, be ready to copy what someone else does already for you. Don't forget to open your eyes, all the time! Copying and improving is the way to work in the past, today, and I am sure in the future. You will be a happy person to be able to improve the old fashion machine or/and process to fill small bottles with powder. If you cannot do, ask someone else.

Before you reach the stage of what you really want, start to pack the first small jar, and you have the time to think about automation and during this period of time, you can get information about everything you want. The world is open to everyone but you have to do something before. There is no compensation without work, Gil.

If this is a small home business as you say, and (are looking for something really cheap)

If you are looking for a way for one person to fill thousands of bottles per shift, and

if you have a hopper of the powdered material available,

I suggest an indexed wheel with 'buckets' on it.. (say the size of a bicycle wheel, but you will have to experiment to get the size)

each 'bucket' will be a small scoop that self-levels to the correct amount of powder.

The hopper might have to be vibrating to keep the powder moving to the centre.

the operator can index the wheel by hand. Their operation would be to hold the receiving bottle under the scoop about to empty, and move the wheel one arc-position, which will pour the powder into the bottle. The operator then caps the bottle and repeats the process, or hands the full bottle off to the next stage in the process.

might be worth a try, but expensive if you have to make it all out of stainless.. mock it up first with available materials, (bicycle wheel) and try with sugar or something... see if it works..

Chris

Hi Chrisq288,

Excellent! It's a real change from your GA! Bravo!! Continue that way, Gil.

It occurs to me that if you design the scoops just so, that you will be able to put the bottle up to the scoop before it starts to pour, and have almost zero spillage, and be able to fill bottles almost as fast as you can handle them... easily filling thousands per shift. five seconds per bottle should be do-able.

PS... so do I get a GA rating from you?

I didn't change my thoughts... what I am proposing for you is the 'low end' solution. I still think Yusef's (among others) comments are highly constructive and knowledgeable.

thank you

Chris

Hello Chrisq228,

Don't ask, I give you the "GA"! Your idea, as already mentionned, excellent, and we can seat down and talk, modify, and finally create something very interesting but we have to wait and get some words from the person who needs the help. Many blog is just a question and lots of answers but no one knows what's the final result?

Concerning your first GA, I already gave my opinion on financing.

Again, after me, in business must be structured around the market and never the product. We have three things in a business;

1) Marketing, which is identifying the market, learning how to communicate with it, and maintaining it with effective sales and customer service. Marketing earns money by communicating with customers so they are encouraged to buy.

2) Fulfillment, which is getting the product or service to the market that are distribution and delivery. Distribution should allow to reach as many different customer bases as possible. Delivery is the way products are physically moved to the customer. Fulfillment service earns money through distribution and delivery of product.

3) Production, which includes that someone has to make whatever was planned to sell. In production we have "raw materials", "Processing", and "Finished products". Production earns money by creating the product marketing sells.

My difference with the importance of financing mentionned, financing is an operation, and operations, "legal", and "financial", never produce money, they are only cost money. The value-added to a product is coming only from the "processing" part in the production, and never from financing. Financing is pure costs and never produces profits to the finished product, processing, yes. Also, financing never promote quality, they push for profits that is the cause of lower quality. However, in any business quality is an essential ingredient for success. And only processing makes what is expected, quality.

Any business operated well can be profitable. It's important to keeping the business as simple and streamlined as possible. How someone conducts the day-to-day operations of its business depends on the operational structure. Must be clearly defined, flexible, and simple at the same time. Never forget, the most important aspects of a business is communication, in-side and out.

These sentences, I hope must or will be the starting moment of the well filled small jars, Gil.

sorry I thought you were the OP.

"financing never promote quality" I totally agree.. shouldn't be that way, but...

Chris

Hi Chrisq288,

Some automation comes with the addition of a horizontal wheel containing funnels with a trap at the end and passing 90* to the other wheel. Another horizontal wheel containing the empty jars and turning opposite to the funnel wheel underneat the funnel wheel. The vertical wheel drops the powder into the funnel with closed trap at the end of the funnel. The second, underneat wheel receives the powder into the jar by opening the trap at the moment when the jar is under the funnel. All three wheels can move in a rhythm. The opening of the trap can be made by a fix stick pushing the trap to open at the right position and when the powder is in the jar, the wheel moves and the stick has no more contact with the trap, the funnel is closed to receive the powder again. Here we have to use hands to put the empty jars and take off the jars once filled.

Sorry, I have know knowledge how to make the design or graphic but I am sure, you, Chrisq288, can do and we start the improvement process again.

Question: What means PO? I am ignorant about it! Make me smarter! Thanks, Gil.

Gil,

PS means "Post Script", which identifies a message occurring at the tail end of the main message... sort of a parting thought.

I see your trap doors, but don't think they would be necessary if the scoops have those 'pockets' I showed. but like I said, there is no substitute for a cheap prototype, as you can't model the behaviour of the powder; only guess at it.

Chris

PS. to give a GA means to press the rating button and vote 'Good Answer'..

Hello again Chrisq288,

Concerning Yusef's comments, I am with him. He descibes exactly what and how things happening in big companies. The difference is that he talks about big companies or corporations, and I just want to elaborate about a starting business as the "powder in the jar" dreamer wants and can succeed. When you are a dreamer and you want to realize this dream, you enter in a "niche market" or start a "niche business". I already started niche businesses but partnership was a big handycap, and I closed or stepped out before disaster.

My idea about business is simple, and is the following as I already did: Develop a system, which could be turned into a business that no one do at the moment and you don't want to do. Being to much to invest to start or you don't liked for you. Propose this idea to someone who can and wants to transform into a separate business. And, supply what this separate business needs and you are able to do, which gives you your business, affordable and pleasant for you.

You alone know and understand both businesses and if the other business is growing with or without your help, you grow with it. So, choose your first idea's business person as the best of the bests but not a friend or member of the family.

In the other hand, if my business is growing too much. For example, I need more than 10 or 15 persons, I split the company in two or three separate businesses. Each new business does specific things to satisfy the original business, which is still your customer.

I am believer in small organizations as simple and streamlined as possible where objects and communications are flowing freely, instantaneously, and without deviations. I respect others ideas but I stay in my world that I know, Gil.

I think you would be a valuable asset in a small business! large companies would make you a bit crazy like me... lol.

I understand your point about 'accountants' and have certainly worked with cfo's who had too much power. but I agree with Yusef's insightful definition of titles, and 'ought to be' description.

Chris

Thanks for the good words, Chris!

Absolutely not, I don't want to work for nobody except myself. I have a small business and it's fine for me. Ideas, I sell or give away for free, depending the person is in front of my nose.

I talk about niche business or small organizations and Yusef explain clearly the situation in corporations. I was twice in a company included 36,000 and more people world-wide and when a small group was created the work was interesting but when the power is in the hands of people who are managers with MBAs and accountants, everything is getting worsth and impleasent, and the results are the same, lousy. My question is: Why organizations who want to make money give those people the power to achieve what's the final results? I have no other answer: People like ignorance to dominate! I hope one newspaper reporter read what we talk, and put her/his conclusions in the front page of a major paper. All the best, Gil.

Wish you good luck!

"I need to design a machine that will drop powder into small 1/4 oz jars or medical pots for retail sale. I have decided to cheap fabricate something out of pvc and have a few ideas how the spill port should work."

A hopper over top a horizontal plunger. Every push of the plunger pushes out a measured quantity of material into a spill port. When the plunger pulls back, it refills, and rachets the bottle line forward. Easy to build even out of steel. Easy to automate.

GA... there will be eventual wear and tear on the plunger and sleeve, but basically a neat and simple solution.

Hello

You can use a funnel and a measuring bowl of required size to fill the jars.

It would be quite simple operation.

In order to use adhesives such as are used in typical pill and vitamin bottles, you need to contact a 3M representative.

I have a plastic bottle of powdered crystals. it came with a thin styrofoam seal, under the screw on cap. I believe they apply a thin adhesive layer to the lip of the bottle before applying the foam disk. the lid then applies the pressure to set the seal.

other sealing advice has already been given, and is valid.. get some used equipment. watch more episodes of "How It's Made"

Chris

Hello

You can use a funnel and a measuring bowl of required size to fill the jars.

It would be quite simple operation.

I tried that as an experiment....got ten funnels, ten containers. A bag of sugar and a measuring spoon. I decided to ignore set up time. step one...place containers on table. step two, place funnels in containers. step three, scoop sugar out of a bowl, strike off, and drop contents into a funnel. Move on to the next. Pick up the funnel and put it into a fresh container. The operations were fairly simple, and I timed it with my stopwatch for a couple of minutes.

The best speed I could do was about 12 containers in a minute. With practice, I might be able to fill two dozen in a minute, but there is also the time spent unpacking the fresh containers, spinning tops on, and packaging the results which would reduce my speed even further.

Fifty dozen in an hour by hand. Thats not too bad. A couple of days to build up an inventory. If you paid yourself (or that homeless guy you hired) fifty dollars an hour (wow!) the packaging operation would add only add a dollar a dozen to the manufacturing costs. Thats good enough for a start up. But then it would be sales which would determine if there is sufficient demand to speed this process. You won't be able to "replace" the worker with a machine though...the worker will still need to be there to run the machine, unpackage the bottles, move the filled bottles to the capping station, and keep the hoppers filled.

So the KISS principle applies yet again! Yeah, so, like, good answer!

Hello Yusef1,

Stop to tell people what to do, they will make too much money, and at the end you have to loan money from them. It's catastrophic for the initiator of a process but it happens the most.

Excellent suggestion!!! Again, I would like to hear from the dreamer of the project, how happy is with all these comments for his future business.

Wait for an answer, Gil.

Hello,

You can fix the position of the funnel and you can provide the movement to the jars to be filled. so you can reduce by two step. If the funnel is fixed your both hand would be free.

Thank You

Hi Amit,

Excellent suggestion! What I have to do with my two free hands? You see, when we want to teach someone something, we have to explain everything clearly because we are limited in brain operation. The food we eat every day doesn't supply all chemicals that is necessary to transfer neurons to neurons the learned sentences and catch everyone's ideas and apply immediately as were explained.

When we provide movement to the jars, we start to automate the system and this is a home business to start.

So, now I understand what I need to do with my free hands, move the jars! It's OK, I move them, stop and fill them, move them and fill them again. Perfect!

Thanks and I go to apply, Gil.

Hello Chris,

I visited the equipment maker. They have excellent high speed filling machines. I used a paint filling machine for decades with evolution around every 5 years. I still have a friend who is a mechanician and making equipment, and we, together, we progressively obtained the fastest and most productive filling machine after 25 years. You know what? This machine is a single head machine with two separated tracks to fill 28 gallon per minutes or 14 per head. One they I visited probably the biggest paint manufacturer and they told me during the visit that this filling machine, pointed with a finger, fills 90 gallon per minute. Holly cow! I was impressed, and asked how many heads you have on the machine. They answered in chorus, 12 heads! I have no more question. I took my small calculator and divided 90 by 12. The result was only 7,5 gallon per head. My machine filled 14 per minute! So, I was a genius! Cheeze, it's not possible that the biggest company is not competitive with my process or machine. Also, we took 12 gallons, weighed and tinted each. Variation by wieght was from low 5.5505 kg to high 5.6250 kg. Imagine the tinting strength of those two opposite weight gallons? Visully, they were very different to our eyes. My filling machines variations went from, for different paint, 5.7800 kg to 5.7950 kg and the tinting strength doesn't produced visible variation.

Without variations, the customer come back to buy more paint. With perceptible variation the customer can claim another gallon, don't come back and goes to another store to hope for better results.

I am not a mechanic but I like to think about equipment I or around me is used.

Thanks for the web-site, Gil.

You have already identified most of the right questions: filling accuracy, operator safety, packaging presentation, and future automation. Let me suggest a practical roadmap that keeps startup costs low but does not trap you when orders grow.

1. Start with a very simple manual filling system
• Use a small hopper and a volumetric scoop or plunger design that always delivers roughly 0.25 oz.
• For powders that flow well, a horizontal plunger under a small hopper works very well: every stroke dispenses a fixed cavity volume into the jar.
• Keep everything in food or medical grade material from day one, even if you are still “prototyping,” so you do not have to redesign later.
2. Think about product and regulations before the machine
• If the powder is food, cosmetic, or medical, check local regulations for GMP, labeling, and tamper evidence before buying or building equipment.
• Your choice of jar, seal, and label is often driven by those rules, so it is safer to finalize packaging format first, then design the filler around it.
3. Jar closure, tamper evidence, and labeling
• For low volume, hand applied twist caps are fine. You can add:
• Induction seal or pressure seal liners under the cap.
• Shrink band around the cap for visible tamper evidence.
• Branded custom labels and stickers to carry ingredient details, dosage, safety warnings, and barcodes in a professional way.
• Later, you can add a small semi automatic capper that simply grips and tightens the caps as jars pass under it, but the closure type should be something standard that existing cappers can handle.
4. Operator safety and powder control
• Your idea of a small ventilated enclosure is good, but keep it as simple as possible at first:
• Local exhaust near the fill point.
• Smooth internal surfaces that can be wiped down quickly.
• Avoid PVC in any contact or near contact surfaces. Use stainless steel or approved plastics that do not hold static and are allowed for food or medical contact.
5. Packaging and outsourcing as a bridge
• For early stages, it may be smarter to focus on proving demand and brand rather than owning the whole line.
• Contract or custom packaging shops already have fillers, cappers, and labelers. You can start by outsourcing filling and only bring it in house when volumes are stable and justify capital expense.
• This keeps your initial investment focused on product, branding, and sales instead of machinery that might not match your real future volumes.
6. Plan automation as a series of small steps
• Stage 1: Manual filling with a simple volumetric scoop or plunger and hand capping.
• Stage 2: Same filling principle, but with a simple indexing mechanism moving jars under the outlet.
• Stage 3: Add a small capper and basic labeling machine.
• Stage 4: If demand is truly high, upgrade to a used professional powder filling line that uses the same jar and closure format you started with.

In short, you do not need a complex machine to begin. Start with a safe, repeatable manual method that uses compliant materials, prove that the market really exists, and let the filling equipment slowly “catch up” to your sales instead of trying to solve the high volume problem before the first jar is sold.

Good luck with bringing the idea out of your head and into the market.