In the historic German settlement town of Fredericksburg, amid the rolling hill country of Texas, sits Altstadt Brewery, a three-story German Tudor brewery, restaurant, and entertainment center that occupies some 58,000 sq ft. Co-founded by William Scripps Jr., part of the Cincinnati-based E.W. Scripps media empire, Altstadt produces German style beers that are guided by the German beer purity laws of 1516 and are brewed using only four ingredients: hops, barley, yeast, and artesian spring water.
Full-body shrink-sleeve labels are applied by a mandrel style machine that uses servo motion control and a fiber optic sensor to read film registration marks.
When the brewery opened in 2018, its only packaging format was glass bottles. But when the HEB supermarket chain suggested that sales of Altstadt’s beer in its stores would triple if cans were available, plans for a can line were boosted from the back burner to “let’s do it right now.” In charge of making it happen was Brien Harper, Senior Consultant atJ.S. Held LLC。Altstadt管理层带来了J.s.举行协助建设和运作雄心勃勃的扩张。
“一条可以在计划中始终处于计划中，”哈珀说。“它刚刚发生的大约两年半，而不是阿尔特拉德最初预期的。”他指出，除了满足HEB要求所需的生产能力增加之外，还计划在达拉斯和休斯顿开辟罐头的新市场。这就是为什么Altstadt不同于其他可能选择适度的罐头能力的其他工艺啤酒厂，只是为了让他们的脚用新的包装格式弄湿，投资于能够245罐/分钟的罐头线。
要使事情更有趣，这不仅仅是追踪的罐头线。在大约同时实施的是一些严重的自动化升级到装瓶线。
But let’s begin with a look at the canning line. Predictably enough, it begins with a depalletizer. Supplied byUni-Pak, it handles both cans and bottles, so the brewery runs one container format or the other but never both formats at once. A short distance downstream from the depalletizer is a fork in the conveyor connection—down one fork go the bottles and down the other go the cans.
All cans are undecorated bright stock. Full-body shrink-sleeve labels supplied byResource Labelare applied by an Aurora labeler fromAxon。The mandrel-style machine uses servo motion control fromRockwell提供一致，可重复的性能。光纤传感器读取胶片注册标记，因此PLC可以计算切割长度以确保套筒长度精度。贴标程序还具有行业标准PackML编程和HMI接口，可提供一致的术语，一致屏幕显示和标准化程序结构，从而易于操作和维护。
标签在轴突蒸汽隧道中立即收缩。从那里，罐头通过空气离子器，在罐达到电离空气冲洗剂之前预先消除内部内侧Dominoink-jet coder that prints the bottom of each can with lot and date code information.
The WMCE Case Erector sends cases to the BCI Basket Carrier Erector/Inserter on the right so that the carriers can be inserted into the cases.
Filling is done on a 21-valvekhs.innofil与六头相结合Ferrum缝线。退出缝线，罐头通过水淋浴冲洗，一个filtec.填充水平和盖子探测器，以及鼓风机Paxton Productsthat blows off moisture.
Following an accumulation table, multipacking in paperboard cartons is next, and it’s done on a Brewpack 200 intermittent-motion cartoner fromSwitchbackthat featuresRockwellKinetix servo drives for controlling product load, flight chains, and carton erector. As cans are mass conveyed into the Brewpack 200, there are only three infeed lanes to receive them. But there’s no chance for back pressure to build thanks to the clever addition of a recirculation conveyor. Should there be a build-up of too many cans, the excess cans smoothly slide off into this recirculation conveyor and return to the cartoner infeed lanes.
Brewpack 200纸箱从杂志饲料中挑选平面，并在整理罐中竖立它们成六计数的组，可以推入纸箱。襟翼自动夹住并封闭，用熔体施加诺森adhesive dispensing system. The paperboard cartons get a date code from a Domino ink-jet system.
At this point the six-count cartons of 12-oz beer cans enter another Switchback machine, the TP-15 Traypacker. It erects 2-in. tall corrugated trays from flat blanks, pushes four six-count cartons into them, and closes up the flaps with hot melt glue applied, again, by a Nordson unit. Harper points out, however, that when Alstadt is running 16- or 19.2-oz cans, the Brewpack cartoner is bypassed and cans go directly into the corrugated trays 12 per tray.
Palletizing of trays and stretch wrapping of pallets are both performed on a palletizer fromTopTier。A concurrent stretch wrapper, the TopTier machine is optimized for palletizing and wrapping loads as the load is built, so loads are stabilized during the palletizing process. Empty film rolls can be replaced in less than 30 seconds. And advanced film management technology developed by TopTier means that the rate of film dispensed is accurately controlled by precise load cell feedback in combination with proprietary algorithms to assure load stability.
Bottling line upgrade
伺服驱动的纸板载体插入器一次拾取四个载波，并在整个插入载体进入波纹情况下保持控制。
Now for the bottling line upgrade. Designed and integrated byVan Zyverden, Inc。, that firm determined that the most economical way to increase the speed of the bottling line and include the new canning line was to combine the two. This allowed both lines to fit in the new packaging hall and share some container conveyors, a combination bottle and can depalletizer, case conveyors, and the TopTier palletizer. Van Zyverden provided Altstadt with turnkey installation that included electric, line controls, sanitary piping, and rigging.
保留在装瓶线中的一件事是Leibinger几年前在Altstadt开始了瓶装。它能够高达12,000瓶/小时的速度。但由于绳手机机上游和下游的运营未得到优化或自动化，从未有过6,000英镑的机会。既然他们是，Altstadt正在运行12盎司的瓶子，8,000英镑，旨在尽快达到11,000件，因为一些额外的调整最终确定。
As was mentioned earlier, the same Uni-Pak depalletizer used for cans is what depalletizes glass bottles. Harper says it only takes about 30 minutes to make a change from glass to cans or vice versa. The bottles run through a pressure-sensitive labeler fromP.E. Labellers。It applies paper labels supplied by Resource Label. Next is a laser coder from Domino that puts lot and date code information on the bottle.
瓶子将单个文件运行到leibinger rinser /填充/瓶盖中。Filtec检验单元启动填充水平不当的瓶子，然后在系统上包装Climax Packaging Machinery。Feeding this machine from a mezzanine level above are a pair of machines from韦恩自动化。Both offer reliability and ease-of-operation features to help make the automation upgrades a smooth transition for the bottling line.
The first of these mezzanine-level Wayne machines is a WMCE Vertical Case Erector. It’s an all-mechanical-motion system that erects corrugated cases and hot melt glues the bottoms. The highly reliable upright case discharge simplifies conveyance to the next Wayne machine, the BCI Basket Carrier Erector/Inserter. The BCI outshines similar equipment because carriers are opened upright and inserted into the case on one compact system. Six-pack paperboard carriers are erected and transported onboard to the inserter section. The servo-driven inserter head picks up four carriers (two per side) at a time and maintains control throughout the insertion process. The use of servo-controlled motion on the BCI enables it to achieve the speeds needed while bringing greater repeatability, better management of paper quality and variability, and ease of maintenance.
Shown here is the decline conveyor on Altstadt’s upgraded bottling line that takes cases filled with six-pack paperboard carriers from the overhead mezzanine level down to the case packer on the main floor.
The cases then slide down a conveyor connection to the main floor and the Climax case packer, which fills two 24-count cases per cycle. Then the filled cases enter a Wayne WTS Case sealer that closes the top flaps and glues them shut. Mounted near the case sealer is an ink-jet date coder from Domino.
现在尘埃已经开始解决最近的安装和升级活动后，哈珀期待推出新罐头。“我们将首先击中达拉斯，然后是Heb，这可能涉及高达250家商店，”他补充道。
