Perfect design of the most popular cookie loss fre

Perfect design of cookie damage free transmission system

food production has special requirements for technology. In the process of making and packaging biscuits, it is inevitable that the products are broken, so there are special transmission problems in the production and packaging of biscuits. Even the packaged biscuits are no exception when they are transported in the factory. Janesselmann, a system technician at unitedbiscuits biscuit factory in zandan, the Netherlands, understands all these issues. It took him 17 years to find the best way to transfer biscuits and other snacks between separate production stations

at present, the United Biscuits biscuit factory produces about 20 tons of cookies a day. These crisp and fragile cookies must be handled very carefully, even when packed in boxes. Biscuits are safely transported from one packaging machine to another on a chain conveyor, some of which are 40 meters long

seize the opportunity to replace equipment

when the company moved the cookie production plant to zandan, northwest of Amsterdam, it seized the best opportunity to replace the old packaging equipment and chain conveyor with cutting-edge technology, while automating the final packaging process. This factory has a history of more than 100 years. In order to meet the limited space in the factory, the company has set up a special project to plan the layout of the new system. "We didn't transfer the production department to the industrial area in the suburbs, which means that we must calculate carefully and plan how to make the best use of the available space of the factory in the urban area," esselmann stressed

in the process of finding the most suitable system, the project team proposed three important standards: the system should have a long transmission area, the width of the transmission chain should be variable in the same program, and the maintenance and cleaning work do not need to spend too much energy. "These three standards are indeed the most important requirements, and the varioflow chain conveyor system produced by Rexroth meets all the requirements," esselmann said. United Biscuits works closely with Rexroth, and it took only a few months to assemble this new transmission system

in the factory, the production of cookies is distributed on two levels. The biscuits are baked in an oven on the upper layer and then sent to a 1.5-meter-wide conveyor belt, where they pass through the cooling system. The packaging operation is carried out in the lower layer. Each 250 gram box of biscuits is individually packaged in plastic bags, or packaged in groups of three, and then transferred to another area, where they are packed into larger boxes for transportation

open system structure

rexroth's varioflow chain conveyor system delivers three different sizes of packaging boxes. For different tasks, the biscuits factory adopts three different conveyor chain widths: 80 mm wide processing independent packaging, 160 mm wide processing three pack packaging, and 320 mm wide processing box packaging. "It is a great advantage that we can get all three widths of transmission chains from a modular system," esselmann explained. He also mentioned several additional varioflow systems. These standards fully consider the benefits of social responsibility, product performance and environmental protection factors in system planning and transmission chain maintenance; "The whole system consists of components with very small differences, which reduces the inventory of required parts," he said. "In addition, the conveyor chain is connected by plugs, so we can disassemble or change an operation line without any special tools."

varioflow system has no other structure in the middle of the conveyor belt, which makes the system almost completely open, and biscuit chips can fall. This means that the system can be kept clean for a longer time. There is no debris, which reduces the need for cleaning operations, and parts do not need to be replaced as often as closed systems

perfect operation design

the reason for choosing this varioflow conveyor is not just its durability. The plug-in installation mode of sliding structure is also one of the factors. Varioflow system does not adopt the more traditional way of using screws to install from above and operate after the empty machine is confirmed to be normal. Its symmetrical sliding structure is tightened from the side. "The benefits of this method are clearly reflected in our maintenance costs," esselmann said. "We can simply turn the conveyor chain over and continue to use it after one side of the conveyor chain is worn."

longer service life is an important standard of varioflow's new curve transmission technology. A patented ball bearing is applied to all corners of the conveyor chain. As a result, sliding friction is changed into rolling friction, which reduces wear compared with ordinary sliding friction. Esselmann also recognized another advantage of using this bearing: "ordinary systems have a curve wheel, which means that the available space at the corner will be reduced," he explained. "Our employees often get too close to the curve wheel, so we think this solution is very important in terms of safety. Such safety problems do not exist in varioflow system." This ball bearing has also become the technical basis for turning with a larger radius of curvature

in addition, project managers must also consider that different sizes of packages to be transferred to various packaging machines require different widths of conveyor chains. As a result, a roller coaster like system appeared in several areas. In addition to the relatively short and curved conveying part, the United Biscuits biscuit factory also needs a 40 meter long conveying belt. Varioflow successfully solves this long-distance problem with only one drive

"this is our longest conveyor belt," esselmann said. "Once these packaging machines have any failure, we need to use it to transfer those packages to manual packaging sites. With varioflow system, we can easily do this, while manufacturers of other similar systems want to consider this part separately." The conveyor chain is actually 80 meters long, but thanks to the use of bearings integrated in the corners, although the conveyor belt has five longitudinal turns, it is still particularly stable

source: packaging Digest China