A producer of deer corn in central Texas was seeking a simple, entry-level open-mouth bag filling system to fill 40-50 pound bags at a rate of 240 bags per hour. The client’s facility had minimum headroom and a limited amount of floor space. Additionally, the only available electrical power at the facility was a single phase, so all equipment had to be designed to operate on 220 volts. The target rate for the system was 9,600-12,000 pounds per hour.

Choice Bagging Equipment had just a system design that would meet the client’s objectives. CBE’s system featured a Model GB open mouth bagger and a simple bag sewing system. The product was fed to the bagging machine by an overhead supply hopper that held about 2,500 pounds of corn. The system required two operators: One to place empty bags on the filling machine and guide them through the sewing machine and a second to palletize the filled bags at the end of the line.

The GB bagging machine featured a mechanical pivot beam weighing scale that would be manually started by the system operator and automatically stop 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 pedestal mounted bag sewing machine after which they were palletized by a second system operator at the end of the packaging line.

A mechanical self-binding bag clamp allowed the bag to hold onto the spout without any pneumatics (which require a compressed air supply).

The flow of material was automatically started and stopped by a 2-position gate valve (called a gravity gate). The mechanical scale would hold the gate valve open until the target weight was met at which time the gate would slip out of a catch which would allow the gate to close.