Preferred applications
Until now, minor and micro components had to be weighed manually, thus entailing risks and potential errors. These increase with the number of components and batches, and with the required weighing and metering accuracy. This has an adverse effect on product safety and quality overall.
Manual operations may require a large number of staff and demands a high degree of concentration from them during weighing processes. They are to some extent exposed to relatively high amounts of dust.
The AZO COMPONENTER® Step makes it possible to weigh minor and micro components automatically with gram accuracy, such as pigments, colourings, flavouring agents, additives, active agents and numerous other micro quantities. The system improves product safety while simultaneously boosting production efficiency by reducing individual manual production steps to a minimum. It can be used in the food, pharmaceuticals, chemicals and plastics industries.
Especially when it comes to sectors with stringent requirements for hygiene, batch purity and product separation, the AZO COMPONENTER® Step enables adherence to the strict regulations and requirements of specific branches.
How it works
The system comprises two levels. The components are held ready in raw material storages on the upper level. Prior to filling, the raw materials can be identified using the barcode and allocated to the correct hoppers. This rules out mix-ups of products and ensures that raw materials can be traced back. The raw material storage can be filled from sacks or big bags; pneumatic filling is also feasible.
The target containers are positioned below the dosing points using a pneumatic drive. After the product is dosed with the quantity determined in the recipe, the target container is transported one step forward to the next dosing point. There are separate scales provided for each component. Simultaneous weighing of components results in maximum time gain. Dosing screws combined with vibration bottoms underneath the raw material storage ensure accurate metering of components being handled. A vibrating chute can also be used for metering. Once all components are in the target container in accordance with the recipe, it is unloaded at the end of the metering line and is ready for the next process.
The target containers are tracked using identification technology and are thus monitored throughout the entire weighing and metering process. This means that the position, the weighed components and also the allocation of the target containers to a particular recipe are documented and are reproducible.
