Machine Flexibility Upgrade 1

You may have gathered from the overwhelming response to your unintelligible question, you need to re-phase it.

The output will be whatever the maximum capacity of the bottle filler is, regardless of the number of lines feeding it.

Ahhh yes... that is the weakest link.

Goodbye.

The customer (in this case Lyn) is always right......., but there are times when we can suggest ways of making him more right than he is now.

Rotary unscrambler tables will work just as well with two outlet lanes as with one.

Most bottling conveyors have adjustable width side guides. With a small amount of modification, the existing conveyor could run two lanes. The bottles can overhang the sides a bit. Add a top hung centre guide for segregation.

If the bottles are fed into the filler with a worm screw, use the rear of the worm to feed a second fill head. The bottle will lag by half a pitch but this can be a benefit. Just offset the fill heads to match. You may have to move the worm screw drive from the side to above and use a long drive shaft terminated in a bevel gear to get the bottles past.

A bottom filler with rising tube would be operated by a cylinder or lead screw. Mechanically fix a second slave rising tube from the same mechanism. It can work from the sensor on the main tube.

Add a second solenoid operated liquid shut off valve wired in parallel the the first, (same applies to pneumatically triggered valves) or mechanically link two valves. A lot of valves have a square stem which makes it easy to link them together.

Automatic capping heads are expensive, but they generally work much faster than the filler. Channel the two lanes back into one and use the existing capper. (this is where a half pitch lag in the bottle positioning comes in real handy). It also means you only need a single label applicator (these also generally operate much faster than filler heads). If you do need a second cap applicator, both can probably be supplied from the same bowl feeder.

GA for your effort.