• Company: Fortune 500 Food Processor
• Objective: Upgrade the company’s existing powder filling line to improve both speed and accuracy while interfacing with the existing Allen-Bradley based control system.
• Situation: The client had four vertical form/fill/seal machines with clutch/brake augers. Each was controlled independently by the auger’s proprietary controls.
• Solution: Spee-Dee® replaced the four clutch/brake systems with direct servo drive conversion kit packages. The existing hardware, hopper, columns, head castings, agitators, and tooling were all retained to save money. A single custom designed Allen-Bradley electrical system was used to control all four augers from a single panel, while the software was incorporated into the client’s PanelView operator interface. In addition, check weigh feedback was installed to control shifts in product density.
• Bottom line: The Spee-Dee system significantly reduced costly line downtime while improving accuracy, resulting in substantial savings in the form of decreased product giveaway. In the words of the client, “By removing the clutch/brake and drive assembly from the old auger heads, the servo conversion has drastically reduced our maintenance requirements and has cut downtime as a result. The servo drive has allowed us to increase the speed of our pouch fillers and maintain a tighter weight control system, thus allowing us to give away less product.”

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