Packaging
Efficient powder filling with the new packaging system ORBIS
Thursday 05. March 2009 - With its latest product ORBIS especially developed for the clean and efficient powder filling into 10-kg to 25-kg bags the company BEHN + BATES, Münster/Germany, aims at producers of milk powder, baking ingredients as well as any other food powders and ingredients. After the promising market launch in spring 2008 the Anuga FoodTec 2009 is the optimum platform for the target-oriented presentation to the international food branches.
Packaging machine builders are faced with special challenges when it comes to fill powders into open-mouth bags. Everybody knows: Powders are dusty. Optimum filling results can only be attained by a perfect relation between low-air filling, dust-tight filling spout and efficient product de-aeration influencing, however, the machine output. Therefore, BEHN + BATES carried out extensive tests with different products in its own test station. The result is the new ORBIS system assuring the efficient hygienic powder filling, the good product compaction in the bag as well as at the same time machine outputs of more than 600 bags per hour. The filled bags are stable thus giving a good pallet shape that is of utmost importance for the product marketing
The ORBIS system can handle all of the common bag types, just as gusseted and flat bags made of paper, PE or combinations. It is equipped with 3, 4 or 6 filling spouts. The show model has got 4 filling spouts carrying out the individual filling steps (empty bag application, coarse and fine flow filling as well as full bag discharge) independently from each other, but in a synchronized way. Thanks to the optimally tuned individual working steps short cycle times and high machine outputs are possible.
The empty bags are supplied from a project-specifically chosen magazine. They are taken out of the magazine at their bottom thus not folding over and causing any problems during the further handling. The servo-driven applicator arm securely places the singled bags at the filling spout. They are hold tight at the filling spout by clamping jaws. Bottom vibrators provided in encapsulated design because of the hygiene in the food industry assure that the bags are compacted optimally.
The filled bags are closed depending on customer’s request either by folding, sewing, sealing, gluing, hot-melt activation or combined systems. In the food industry the combination of sealing and hot-melt activation has proven its worth. Bags are especially tight then. Humidity, foreign bodies, bugs or similar cannot penetrate the product. Even longer storage times are possible due to the tight closure in combination with an internal PE welding provided that the right bag material has been chosen.
The severe hygienic standards in the food industry were decisive for BEHN + BATES’ new machine design ORBIS: For easy cleaning purposes the machine is suspended from the top, the machine bottom is completely closed and the energy cables are laid outside the dust area. The access doors are flush with the machine frame. Possible dust deposit areas are reduced to a minimum.
With the ORBIS system BEHN + BATES is well prepared for the future and optimistically looks ahead in spite of the world-wide financial and economic crisis.