SUBNIL has launched its CONDOR 300 tube filler, with a capacity to produce up to 300 tubes/min. It fills viscous and semi-viscous products into tubes and closes them depending on the type of tube. Metal tubes are crimped whereas plastic and laminate tubes are sealed.
This is a linear chain model, which has all the features of the current rotary machines, like vertical product dosing, bottom-up filling with shut-off nozzle and a tool-less changeover. It also has attractive options like multi-colour filling and profiled seals.
The tubes have to be first manually transferred from the tube box to the cassette provided on the machine, which in turn transfers them to a conveyor that is driven by servo. From the conveyor, multiple tubes are picked up with a servo-driven rotary pick-up device and loaded into the tube holders. The tubes then travel through the orientation, filling and closing stations before they are ejected out. The indexing, as well as the main drive, are also servo-driven.
The CONDOR 300 is linked and synchronised downstream with its sister company Vectacraft’s MERLIN 300XC cartoner and OSPREY 25 bundler, to form a line – the SL 300 tube packaging line. The soon-to-be-added KESTREL 10s case packer will also make it a complete solution for tube packaging.
Once closed in the CONDOR 300, the tubes are ejected out of the tube filler onto a tube-transfer system, which flaps the tubes into the pockets of the product conveyor of the MERLIN 300XC horizontal cartoner. The cartoner is servo-driven, taking its position from feedback given by the tube filler.
In the MERLIN 300XC, a pre-folded leaflet is first picked up by a rotary pick-up device and fed to the pincer on the leaflet chain. A carton is then picked up from the stack by a servo-driven rotary pick-up device, pre-broken and then loaded into the carton chain. The tube is inserted into the carton and it is closed on both sides either by tuck-in or gluing.
The cartons then travel from the outlet of the cartoner to the in-feed conveyor of the OSPREY 25V bundler, where they are first collated in a desired matrix. The required length of BOPP film is brought down by grippers; the bunch is wrapped and pushed to the sealing station. Here, the main overlapped film is first sealed and then the film on the pack ends to create a sturdy multipack.
The multipacks would then travel to the KESTREL 10s casepacker where they will be collated, loaded into cases and taped or glue-sealed. Hence, the first machine takes in the empty tubes with the filling product and the last machine produces a packed case, ready to be shipped out of the customer's factory.
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