A producer of Ice Melt products in northwest Arkansas was seeking an open-mouth bagging system to package 30,000 pounds per hour of its formulation into 20-50 pound bags. They wanted a system that would be fast, weight accurate and economical. Additionally, the only available electrical power at the facility was single phase so all equipment had to be designed to operate on 220 volts single phase.
To achieve the client’s objectives, Choice Bagging Equipment recommended a system featuring a Model GWB-GV open mouth bagger and an in-line band sealer system. The product was fed to the bagging machine by an overhead supply hopper that held approximately 4,000 pounds of material. The system required two operators. One operator places empty bags on the filling machine and guides them through the sealer machine. A second operator palletizes the filled bags at the end of the line.
To achieve the required filling rate and bag weight accuracy required, CBE recommended a Model GWB-GV bagging machine. This machine features an integrated digital weighing scale that started at the press of a foot pedal by the system operator and automatically stops and releases from the filler once the target weight had been achieved. Filled bags were automatically discharged onto a specially designed bag closing conveyor and transferred to and through a continuous hot air sealer that provided 100% positive bag closure. Sealed bags were elevated to waist height on a powered belt conveyor and palletized by a second system operator at the end of the packaging line.
Each filling sequence was semi-automatic. This means that an operator would manually hang each bag, depress a foot pedal, and then it would be filled to a pre-programmed weight, stop filling and release automatically. The filling machine had an integrated weighing scale, which worked in combination with a single PLC-based control package. The weighing controls were specially designed for open-mouth bag filling applications and featured a gain-in-weight totalizing display. The controls were designed with the ability to communicate weight data to a printer or central management control system.
An air-operated bag clamp secured the bag to the filling spout without the operator having to manually secure it to the filling spout which sped up production dramatically.
The flow of material was automatically started and stopped by a combination gravity gate that controlled the fast or “bulk” mode of fill and a vibratory pan feeder that controlled the slow or “dribble” mode of fill. The integrated digital control and the weighing system would signal the pneumatic functions of the machine on and off in the correct sequence including the pneumatic gate valve would regulate the amount of material into the bag.
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