How do commercial bottling lines cap the beer?

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mattd2

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This is more out of interest (and possible distant future use) but….
How do commercial, or DIY, bottling lines cap the beer. I have searched on here and found a couple of automatic bottle filling lines (Claudius one is trick) and a few pneumatic cappers but nothing on putting it all together. If you were to build one the capping part would be easy as it would be nearly identical to the filling station but with a capper instead, my issue is how you get the crown caps onto the bottles for capping. My thoughts have leaded me down the track of the capper picking up a cap with an electromagnet (but not sure how to either pick up only 1 if the caps are stacked or how to easily have a column of caps stacked “side-by-side” without personally sitting there and ending up with a 5 foot column of caps)
Anyone that has worked in a bottling plant want to share the secret?
 
Suction sounds like a good idea, The other thing I thought of is at the last place I worked (steel mill) the used electromagnets to pick up plate stock, high voltage would come on picking up the first few in the stack, then the voltage would drop to a lower level so that all but the first plate was held, but suction sounds like a good way to go!
 
I would think the actual capping part would be easy. You could use an electromagnet that turns on to pick up the cap and off to drop it. You could use suction (on and off), or you could use something mechanical to push the cap on. I would think the harder part would be getting all the caps lined up and right side up so that the machine grabs 'em right.
 
Yeah I guess that is what I was meaning by having them stacked side by side in some sort of slotted frame - PITA to do that. Manually stacking them ontop of each other would probably be a bit more acceptable but still annoying. I reackon you could stack 100 caps ontop of each other (in some sorta tube) in a few minutes.
 
I just thought about the need to keep the top of the stack at the same hieght no matter how many caps are left. My first concept is to "clamp" the second cap in the stack and have a end plate that slides away. The caps would be pushed up against the end plate by a spring, when the capper is ready to pick up a cap the clamp holds the second cap in place, the end plate slides away, capper picks up cap (suction/magnet), end plate slides back, calmp realeases and caps are pushed one space upward.
I don't think you would need an electromagnet for this either as a permenant magnet would hold the cap but wouldn't ba able to lift a bottle so the capped bottle would not be lifted off the line.
 
This is more out of interest (and possible distant future use) but….
How do commercial, or DIY, bottling lines cap the beer. I have searched on here and found a couple of automatic bottle filling lines (Claudius one is trick) and a few pneumatic cappers but nothing on putting it all together.
My original toy bottling line was equipped with a rotary filler and single cap crowner.
The crowns came down a chute by gravity into a guide. The indexing motion of filler made the bottle lip pick up the crown.
The second version used a pneumatic cylinder and magnet to guide the crown.
Since the filler-capper was not equipped with a crown sorter bowl I used preloaded cartridges plugged into the chute.
The nice thing about using the cartridges was the sanitizing of the crowns, just dipped the unit into SaniClean.
Someday I might build a new crowner for my current museums piece.
Have to finish a more imported two year old project.



Cheers,
ClaudiusB
 
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Cheers Claudius,
YouTube is blocked at work but I will be watching the video when I get home! I was wondering if you could get prepackaged stacks of caps :)
 
YouTube is blocked at work
Smart employer;)
I was wondering if you could get prepackaged stacks of caps

Not to my knowledge, bottle crowns are fed side by side down the chute.
If you do can filling the lids come stacked.

you make the automated equipment?
Yes, and with the help from some great guys.

I'm assuming your a controls guy
I know the basics;)

Cheers,
ClaudiusB
 
I'm going to speculate that there's a vibrating hopper that's used to draw caps out of a bowl and place them onto a sort of conveyor with cap-sized cutouts in it. There are several companies out there (such as Automation Devices Inc. http://www.autodev.com ) who make that sort of thing. We use devices like that at my company to feed nuts and bolts to our fastening machines.

Once you've got a stream of properly oriented caps in a sort of belt-feed system, it's not terribly difficult (for a mechanical design engineer) to couple that with a line of filled bottles and have a mechanism that transfers each cap to a bottle.
 
I'm going to speculate that there's a vibrating hopper that's used to draw caps out of a bowl and place them onto a sort of conveyor with cap-sized cutouts in it. There are several companies out there (such as Automation Devices Inc. http://www.autodev.com ) who make that sort of thing. We use devices like that at my company to feed nuts and bolts to our fastening machines.

Once you've got a stream of properly oriented caps in a sort of belt-feed system, it's not terribly difficult (for a mechanical design engineer) to couple that with a line of filled bottles and have a mechanism that transfers each cap to a bottle.

I wouldn't bet against that idea, I guess the problem with trying to emulate a commercial system for a DIY line is the share volume and speed that the big boys go at. The cost of the commercial line to place the caps ontop of the bottles (not even capping them) would probably be out of any sensable homebrewers budget;)

From the video that Claudius posted and not see the capping heads up close I would guess that the rotating capper has a slot the a cap is passed into and below the slot is a hole that would let a capped cap through but not an uncapped one, so the cap sits on the lip, then gets pressed onto the bottle then it can fit through the hole and another cap is loaded.

How did I go Claudius, even close?
 
My original toy bottling line was equipped with a rotary filler and single cap crowner.
The crowns came down a chute by gravity into a guide. The indexing motion of filler made the bottle lip pick up the crown.
The second version used a pneumatic cylinder and magnet to guide the crown.
Since the filler-capper was not equipped with a crown sorter bowl I used preloaded cartridges plugged into the chute.
The nice thing about using the cartridges was the sanitizing of the crowns, just dipped the unit into SaniClean.
Someday I might build a new crowner for my current museums piece.
Have to finish a more imported two year old project.
Cheers,
ClaudiusB

That was one of the best videos I have seen!
One question, what was the jet just before the capper for?
 
gotta admit claudius, that i wish arcadia had a set-up like that. were lucky if we can get 800/hr out of that ancient beast they have(mid 60's vintage). is that a 36 head filler?
 
That was one of the best videos I have seen!
One question, what was the jet just before the capper for?

I noticed that too and was wondering the same thing. The only thing I could come up with is that it was there to cause the bottles to foam up. It looked like right after they went under the stream, they foamed up and then were capped. Of course, the reason for foaming is to remove any O2 from the bottle.
 
Here is a small automated line that is popular for use in large brewpubs and smaller micros.

merlin06-1.jpg


I used a older version of this unit at one of the pubs I worked at. He has updated quite a few of the features, including the capping system.

crown.jpg


For more information, check out http://www.meheen-mfg.com/
 
That was one of the best videos I have seen!
One question, what was the jet just before the capper for?

I haven't seen the video but I am guessing it was to foam the beer up so the cap went on foam. Was it a jet of air the blew over the bottle top?
 
One question, what was the jet just before the capper for?

Yes.
Its a jetter mechanism (fobber) causes the beer to foam up and replace the air CO2 head space with fob from the beer.
This is often done with a jet of sterile water or on some older systems with a tapper to produce foam.

Cheers,
ClaudiusB
 
Here is a small automated line that is popular for use in large brewpubs and smaller micros.
The Meheen has been around for a long time and has a very good track record.
The reason I did not built my filler in 1995 like a Meheen was the hand loading and unloading of the bottles. My setup can be connected to any infeed/outfeed conveyor without an operator.
I like the improvement Meheen made to the crown sorter.

I'm going to speculate that there's a vibrating hopper that's used to draw caps out of a bowl and place them onto a sort of conveyor with cap-sized cutouts in it.
I have not seen a vibratory feeder for crowns, tumblers are very common.

How did I go Claudius, even close?
My second version was very close to your description.
I am looking for some old pics.
In the old days I did not take pics of every step like I do now.

Cheers,
ClaudiusB
 
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