Producing fruit snacks 24/7 and operating now since November 2021, Mogul Line 5 at PIM Brands requires some serious packaging equipment to cope with the volume of fruit snacks it generates. So for primary packaging the Somerset, N.J., firm lined up eight combination scales from Multipond each paired with a vertical form/fill/seal twin bagger from GEA.
“It’s a direct feed from processing to packaging,” says engineering manager Chris Greco. “That means we don’t bulk off the product and then move it to packaging. In fact we don’t touch the product at all. It comes off the mogul [the term used in the confectionery industry for the machinery that makes shaped candies] into finished product conveying and then continues straight through to packaging. So as we evaluated the equipment we wanted on the new line, speed and footprint were two priorities. That’s where the Multipond/GEA stack-ups come in. Each pair pushes out about 360 bags per minute with each bag weighing 0.8 ounces.”
Packaging begins on an overhead level, where finished product is directed onto one of two long vibratory conveyors from Layton Systems. Running perpendicular to each of these conveyors are four smaller vibratory conveyors each leading directly to a Multipond scale. Product flows through these vibratory conveyors based on which scales are calling for it.
Shown here are three of the eight twin-bagger discharge stations that deposit 0.8-oz bags of gummies onto the conveyor that carries them to a cartoning operation.
All of the Multipond scales are the Model MP-36-400-400-J2. Product falls into 36 buckets whose load cells register how much product is in each bucket. The weights are communicated to a central processor that then picks which combination of buckets contains 0.8 oz of product. Those buckets then release product down the twin tubes leading to pouch forming and sealing, which is where the GEA Smartpacker Twintube C machines come in. All eight of them pull roll-fed metallized film up over a forming mandrel and down into the sealing and filling station. The sealing jaws produce the top of the exiting bag and the bottom of the next bag. Why the Welch Foods graphics on bags and cartons? Because PIM Brands produces the fruit snack gummies under a licensing arrangement with Concord, Mass.-based Welch Foods, Inc.
Mounted on each of the GEA baggers is a SmartDate X30 thermal-transfer printer from Markem Imaje that imprints lot and date code information.
Return to overhead level
At this point the 0.8-oz pouches are down at floor level. But they need to return to the overhead level to reach the infeed of the combination scale that delivers them to a floor-level cartoner directly below. They make this return to the overhead level by way of a bucket incline conveyor from Wiese. “We like the Wiese equipment because it doesn’t use a chain to drive the buckets,” says Greco. “It’s a rubber-coated cable instead. By eliminating that metal-to-metal contact of chain on sprockets, you minimize wear. Also part of the Wiese system is storage capability that holds about 10 minutes of production so we can keep our baggers running if anything downstream goes down.”
One floor above the twin baggers are eight 36-bucket combination scales that drop gummies down into the form/fill/seal baggers.
Patented reject system
The 24-bucket combination scale mounted over PIM Brands’ Tishma cartoner is a Yamato DataWeigh ADW-0-06245. It’s notable for a piece of patented technology called the SVR Reject System. To understand the benefits it brings, it’s best to take a look at an operating problem common to many radial combination scales available today: overfilled weigh buckets.
Weigh buckets can be overfilled in a number of ways, but it’s seen most frequently when product bridges and jams up as it makes its way from the dispersal cone to the feed pans to the weigh buckets. Back pressure eventually breaks the jam, causing product to be propelled out into a weigh bucket in far greater numbers than what’s called for. The end result is that that weigh bucket ceases to operate until an operator manually removes it from its mount and empties its contents back into the top dispersal cone so that the items can be redistributed out to the weigh buckets again in a more measured manner. And with a combination scale, whenever even one weigh bucket is out of operation, both speed and accuracy of that weighing system are compromised.
Yamato’s SVR Reject System addresses this problem by introducing a rotating ring right beneath the weigh buckets. Also important is that the weigh buckets are dual-acting. On-target weigh buckets are discharged to the inside chute leading down to the bagger. But overfilled weigh buckets are discharged outside and onto the rotating ring. This brings two significant benefits. First, if a weigh bucket does get overfilled, it does not cease to operate, so productivity is not negatively affected. Second, there’s no need for an operator to climb up and empty an overfilled weigh bucket back into the central dispersal cone. The overfilled weigh bucket simply discharges its contents onto the rotating ring. The ring then delivers its contents to a discharge chute. At PIM Brands, rejected bags drop from the rotating ring onto a conveyor that leads back up to the top dispersal cone.
