Tag PB-1000

Hyde and Hyde MAP Salad Line

Hyde and Hyde is a food processor and distributor based in Cincinnati, Ohio and Corona, California with a packaging facility offering custom packing services as well as packaging its own-label products for supply to the food services market. The company specialises in the production of trays and bags of mixed salad components for the US market.

New machines

In August 2008 the company upgraded its salad packing line with the installation of a new modified atmosphere packaging (MAP) system, which was also able to increase the speed of the line and improve efficiency and accuracy to speeds of up to 60 trays a minute. The system was a MAP fill-and-seal machine designed to produce trays of ready-to-eat salad meals for a fresh produce supplier creating tray based salad meals.

The Model PB-1000 servo-driven, 4-wide, modified-atmosphere packaging (MAP) machine was supplied by ORICS Industries Inc and has allowed the production of very complex products under modified atmosphere. Salad trays can be complicated, yet a single Model PB-1000 can deposit meat, nuts, grated cheese, dried fruit, croutons and even pots of dressing and condiments into the multi-compartment tray before sealing under modified atmosphere.

The accompaniment trays are then taken to the fresh produce supplier where they are attached to a fresh salad bowl, completing the one-step meal product ready for shipping.

The PB-1000 machine is able to achieve its accuracy and high speeds under modified atmosphere conditions because it makes use of automation technology provided by Festo Corporation. The Festo technology includes CPX manifolds with DeviceNet nodes, DSM-CC rotary actuators with hydraulic shock absorbers, DGPL rodless pneumatic cylinders, VAD vacuum generators and cups, DGO magnetically coupled rodless cylinders and a range of custom produced Festo fittings, such as sensors, height compensators, cylinder mounts and shock absorbers.

The CPX manifolds in conjunction with the Device Net nodes allow the I/O interface on the machine to be far less complex and, along with the CPX controller, allow standalone or integrated control and faster fault diagnosis. The machine makes use of an Allen-Bradley PLC supplied by Rockwell Automation Inc and has a digital, touchscreen HMI.

Machine operation

At the start of a typical operation the trays are stored in four magazines. The first operation is their vacuum-based denesting onto rails, from which the trays are pushed into four lanes through the machine.

There are three consecutive weighing stations, each weighing a single product (each station has a 14-head rotary scale system from Combiscale). Each weigher receives the product from floor hoppers via a conveyor belt to their vibratory hoppers, which then transfer it to one of 14 feed buckets.

The opening of the buckets to the fill chute is controlled by the computer using Festo DSM-CC rotary actuators according to the recipe combination required. A system of buckets again controlled by actuators transfers the food component to each of the four trays in the receiving area, which are then moved to the weighing area for check-weighing and inspection.

The next phase is the incorporation of the carton of salad dressing, which is accomplished by a combination of manual placement and an arm controlled by DGPL rodless cylinders and using a vacuum cup to pick up the container of salad dressing. The filled trays are then moved to the sealer, where they are flushed with an inert gas mixture in an evacuated chamber.

Finally heat-seal film is sealed across the tray top and trimmed by a die around the trays before they are moved to the next stage of the packaging process.

ORICS: M.A.P.’d Salads for Hyde and Hyde

Article Appeared: GatewayPackaging.com.  Viewed on February 17, 2014

SUNNY SIDE UP

Thriving hummus producer maintains the cutting quality edge with (equipment by ORICS)

[av_dropcap1]M[/av_dropcap1]aking hay while the sun shines is sound, time-tested advice for any small business trying to grow to the proverbial next level. And these are sunny days indeed for the super-friendly folks running the Sunflower Kitchen plant in east-end Toronto—one of a fastgrowing number of Canadian-based producers of the increasingly popular chickpea-based spread called hummus, a core staple of Middle Eastern diet and cuisine for well over a millennia…

As the company’s buy steroids australia sales steadily increased,prompting four relocations to bigger premises in the past seven years, so had its need for more automated, higher-capacity processing, packaging and quality control equipment,according to Jungreis.

“It was our move to automation that ultimately led Sunflower Kitchens to decide exactly what products to make and distribute into the marketplace,” says Jungreis. “With the ability to do automated fills quickly and easily, we were able to determine exactly what products we could make to fill the market needs.”

The bulk of the plant’s hummus production is handled by the linear model PB-1000 filler and lidder from ORICS Industries Inc., which operates by dropping a small plastic tub from above onto the conveying line, filling it with hummus, vacuum sealing it with a layer of plastic film and crowning it with a semi-rigid, pop-top plastic lid before moving it out of the system for case packing.

Other key pieces of packaging machinery at the Sunflower Kitchens plant include an ORICS R20 rotary filler, …and an ORICS model R30 rotary filler for hot-fill applications.

Original Article: Canadian Packaging, July/August 2013

ORICS – Equipment for every application

Sliced apples stay fresh for 36 days

(ORICS M.A.P. Systems and )Robotics to the rescue

By Pat Reynolds, VP Editor, Packaging World

Preformed three-compartment trays used for Reichel Foods’ snacks are filled with a variety of components. Monday it might be meat cheese and crackers Wednesday nacho chips and salsa and Friday peanut butter jelly and pizza bread.

The trays are filled by a semi-automatic depositor but some compartments are fed by hand. No two operators load trays at the same pace so filled trays in their eight lanes head toward the lidding machine randomly. The task of evacuating backflushing and lidding these trays is performed by an intermittent-motion machine that Craig Reichel describes as one of a kind.

“We needed automated equipment that would accept randomly fed trays in multiple lanes” says Reichel. “Most machinery builders who said they could design such equipment wanted a sizeble financial commitment from us before they would even show us what their solution was.”

Considering that his was a small firm in start-up mode such an arrangement was less than ideal. One equipment builder however willing to design machinery on acceptable terms was Orics Industries (Flushing NY). The eight-lane system installed by ORICS in 1998 uses eight-cavity-wide carrier plates 23 plates in all to take trays through a lidding chamber. Arranged like the treads of a tank in a long oval path the carrier plates come up to receive filled trays at the infeed end of the oval travel through the lidding chamber discharge lidded trays at the discharge end of the oval and then travel beneath the machine before coming back up at the infeed end.

Immediately upstream from this part of the system is a robotic pick-and-place tool and just ahead of that an eight-lane infeed device. The robot has eight pairs of end effectors. When a filled tray reaches the transfer position a sensor signals the central PLC to actuate a mechanical device that elevates the tray slightly. This puts the tray into the pick position. Also triggered is a mechanical stop that prevents trailing trays in that lane from advancing. When all eight lanes have a tray in the pick position the servo-driven robot’s eight pairs of end effectors pick up their assigned trays and load them into an eight-cavity carrier plate.

The carrier plate takes the trays into the sealing chamber. Just ahead of this chamber eight fiber-optic sensors detect when containers are present. A signal is then sent to the PLC indicating that the sealing chamber is to be activated.

Inside the sealing chamber says Reichel “A lot of things (Modified Atmosphere, M.A.P.) happen.” The first thing once the chamber is closed is evacuation. Next is backflushing with a modified atmosphere (M.A.P.) followed by heat sealing of lid to tray and finally cutting of the lidding material around the tray perimeter. With all these tasks performed the lidding chamber opens and all eight trays are discharged onto a takeaway conveyor leading to an automatic cartoner. Reichel runs the machine as fast as 120 trays/min.

“One of the nice things about the machine is that the carrier plates move independently of the film feed” says Reichel. “Film is only drawn from the roll when it’s needed. The carrier plates just keep steadily cycling through the lidding (M.A.P.) chamber while the infeed section waits for all eight pick stations to be occupied by a tray. Only then will trays be advanced and lidding material drawn. It’s a very clever solution that accommodates our random-feed requirement without wasting lidding material.”

Originally Appeared: Packaging World, April 30, 2001