WILCO of Switzerland has designed, manufactured and installed the first completely servo driven high-speed nested pattern trayloader. The equipment has been installed after a high-speed laser based oxygen headspace analyser, also manufactured by WILCO.
Operation
The "good" tested vials from the previous WILCO inspection machine will be transferred from the inspection machine outfeed belt to the trayloader infeed belt. The trayloader infeed belt, in combination with a servo driven infeed screw, will position each vial exactly in front of the tray. Depending on the chosen recipe in the HMI, the vials are counted and are loaded in rows into the tray. Exact mechanical guiding and servo driven movements guarantee an exact loading and counting process. The maximum achievable loading speed depends on the vial and tray format dimensions.
A full tray is automatically removed from the loading station and replaced by an empty tray. The operator needs to remove the full tray from the machine and places, at the same time, another empty tray into the machine.
Exact counting verifies the amount of vials entering the machine and the amount of vials loaded. Additionally, the amount of trays is counted as well. The counters are part of the batch report.
Key features:
- Tray loading capacity of up to 600 vials per minute
- No risk of falling vials, especially with small diameters
- Standard WILCO pharmaceutical machine design
- Very few change parts, only a short drive screw and 2 side guides
- No mechanical adjustments required for a product change over. All adjustments are pre-stored in the HMI and are done by servo motors
- Format change in less than 15 minutes
- No pneumatic parts
- Very effective product handling due to servo ramp programming
- Loading pattern can either be "even/odd", "even/even" or "odd/odd"
- Operator assistance only required for removing full trays and loading empty trays
- In combination with other WILCO machines, interfaces can be tested and verified during FAT
The design of the equipment allows the operator to choose through the HMI menu structure, with which nested pattern design the trays should be filled with. The use of several programmable servo drives allows for fast changeovers and without any mechanical adjustments.
This development makes WILCO a complete supplier of both leak detection/inspection machines and peripheral handling equipment.