Here a startup of a J board packaging production line.
See this movie after installation
[ Ссылка ]
The production line was installed in 2013, this was the startup.
This machine cun run up to 120/min with our latest align, inline and rotation systems for meat, cheese and fish.
The J board in this movie was very tough, thickness of the carton was about 0.7 mm and there was no folding line. In these cases prefolding can help. This J bord had 2 folding lines about 15 mm apart to allow higher product heights. So there were 2 prefoldings which needs a bigger prefolding machine. For typical American J boards prefolding is still usefull but the length of the prefolding unit can be much shorter.
The J board can be loaded with the long side leading or the shortside leading. In this movie the L board is loaded short side leading and the product has been rotated 90 degrees and aligned short side leading.
In this movie the J board is loaded by a product belt above while the product is positioned at the folding line of the flap on the J board. Before the loaded J board moves into the packaging machine the flap has to be guided sideways and down while moving in the packaging machine. To prevent the package from sliding sideways the belt can have guides or pockets or have vacuum to prevent the package moving sideways when pushing the flap down. In this movie vacuum was foreseen but a high friction belt was enough and no vacuum was need. A proper prefolding does only cause very low sideways forces on the J board while folding the flap flat in the foil.
The prefolding in this movie included 2 folding lines. Typically we fold up to 180 degrees before opening the J board again which makes the flap flexible and prevents sideway forces while transporting the tray in foil of the packaging machine.
The packaging machine in this movie is a kind of mix between a flowpack and a thermoformer. It has several moving transverse sealstation rotating in a circle allowing a seal time that is comparable to a thermoformer.
Just like a thermoformer, the seal time can be many seconds in this machine. These machines are sold under the name BegePack from Italy in Europe but in US there are similar machines of this type.
Any type of flowpacker or thermoformer can be loaded in this way with J boards. The food products like meat, fish and cheese can be grouped, aligned, pitched, inlined either in single or multiple lanes and with or without tray. We have been succesfull at loading, aligning, rotating cheese and meat product at speeds up to 120/min
see movie here [ Ссылка ]
We can produce 1-8 lanes card or tray dispensers that have a big buffer which can be loaded without any production interruptions.
The dispencer bents the trays first when picking it from the stack and then puts a knive in between the gap allowing a reliable denesting without missing trays. Also, the movements of this denester is slow because it has many lanes which prevents from vacuum effects between trays that can disrupt the reliability which sometimes is the case for single lane high speed dispencers and carton. A further advantage of this dispencer principle is that it allows much bigger stacks. We have been producing this denesting principle for more than 20 years both for plastic and karton trays. It also allows for easy exchangable vacuum bars for different sizes of trays. Changing from one traysize to another can be as fast as in 1 minut. There are 2 handles for changing the width and height of the tray for all lanes together.
An underleaver instead of a dispenser placing sheets from roll can also be used or a combination of both. In this case the underleaver is placed after the dispencer and typically does need much need additional length.
We currently produce several new designed machines to align and rotate food products at high speeds to allow a very precise placement of the product on the J board, tray or underleaver. The capacity can be as fast as 120/min in a short installation. The products like meat, cheese or fish can be turned from longside to shortside leading.
The product can also be loaded long side leading on the tray and after loading the trays can be rotated short side leading either clockwise or counterclockwise. This can be a solution if portions of meat hava few sticking behaviour and easily fall apart when orienting on belts like hard frozen slices. We have been succesfull rotating meat slices that only have an overlap between slices of only 50%.
After turning the trays with meat, fish or cheese short side or longside leading the trays can be spread over a belt to allow multiple lanes and/or grouping and or/pitching. We produce precise inlining and spreading systems see here [ Ссылка ]
