Manual filling and labeling was the method of operation until the 2019 commissioning of aFogg填充物Rinser/Filler/Capper。“We had a very small footprint in which we needed to fit our packaging line,” says High West founder David Perkins. “Fogg was able to incorporate the rinser, filler, and capper in one chassis, which made all the difference in the world. Three separate machines was not going to work.”
A pressure-sensitive labeler from P.E.Labeller applies either front-and-back or full-wrap labels.
TheArol capper—actually a corker—notes Perkins, is also new to the semi-automated line. So are the following:
• 一种P.E.律师pressure-sensitive labeler from that applies either front-and-back or full-wrap labels
• 一种3M圆锥形锥度
•来自Collopack
• 一种Videojet date coderthat prints lot and date code information on each bottle label
•aWeber print-and-apply thermal-transfer case labeler
“In our manual bottling mode, we needed a crew of about 28 people,” says Perkins. “Now it’s more like three—one to take empty bottles from their reshippers and place them on the conveyor leading into the rinser, one to put filled, capped, and labeled bottles back into the reshippers, and one to palletize the reshippers.”
In addition to greatly reducing the amount of hand labor required to get bottles out the door, the 14-station rotary filler runs at a steady 35 bottles/min when 750-mL bottles are in production. Previously the top speed on that size was 27/min. And, says Perkins, a 375-mL bottle is also in the mix, and when that bottle is being filled the output is more like 50/min.
Two bottle styles are filled at High West, and both come from帕维萨。一种称为“乡村火石”的风格代表了公司填充的大多数瓶子，但也是琥珀色的药剂瓶。
Regardless of which bottle is being filled, the process begins with bottles being removed by hand from corrugated reshippers and placed on an infeed conveyor. The first stop is the rinser, which consists of 14 stations on a rotary turret. Each bottle is gripped and inverted so that a rinsing medium can be gently sprayed inside to remove corrugated dust and other impurities. Worth noting is that the rinsing medium, while largely water, also contains a certain percentage of whatever whisky is being filled. If it were pure water it might alter the percentage of alcohol by volume.
重力喂养填充物
在冲洗过程结束时，将每个瓶子返回其直立方向。现在，星轮和进型螺旋体组合将瓶子转移到重力喂养填充剂上，该填充剂也有14个站。每个填充阀都是聚合物尖端的，因此，如果阀进入时，阀门就会与玻璃接触，则消除了玻璃被碎裂的机会。
高西酿酒厂专注于业务的运营方面。去这里to see how another spirits brand designed a presentation box with double-door design that opens to a stunning, gold foil menagerie fit for a queen.
Filled bottles move through another feed screw exchange to enter the single-head pick-and-place corker. Corks move from a floor-level hopper up to an overhead position and then are fed down a chute to a reciprocating device that picks one cork at a time and presents it to an insertion device that lifts the cork out. As the reciprocating device strokes back to get another cork, a freshly filled bottle arrives beneath the insertion device, which strokes down to put cork into bottle. The filled bottles then are conveyed out of the Fogg system.
After cases are taped shut, a print-and-apply labeler brings the line to a close.
Two last observations on the Fogg system. First, the whole rinse/fill/cap block is fully enclosed by a roof of sorts. This is to keep plant dust from making its way back into a bottle after it’s been rinsed. Second, a very efficient “de-dusting” system is in place. Cork is notorious for generating dust, so vacuum hoses attached to the enclosed block do a good job of removing cork dust that might otherwise make its way into a bottle or might even cause machine downtime if given enough time to build up.
一旦离开雾系统，瓶子就会通过压力敏感的P.E传送。标签机。接下来是Collopack的一个单位，该单元在脖子上涂抹了篡改的印章。然后，手动将瓶子放回瓦楞纸船上。3M表壳锥度和Weber打印和应用标签将线路结束。
“What we were doing in the past just wasn’t sustainable,” says Perkins. “Now we have equipment we can leverage for the foreseeable future—and it fits our space. Fogg was very good at setting us up for success. They’ve given us all the information and guidance we need for optimizing preventive maintenance. And they’ve been great about helping us with anything we can’t work through. The attention to detail they apply to their equipment and customers matches what we apply to what we do here at High West.”
