This production line consists of two parts: filling machine and cartoning machine. The maximum output can reach 100cups and 9boxes, mainly to meet the needs of customers with small and medium output.
1.Loading Cup
Vertical Loader to place empty kcup, 2.5m length of tube as a buffer for kcups and save your footprint, this system equips with detector for inspecting existence of K Cup in the mold plate. Detector is linkage to alarm system as a broadcast, when cup is low it will tell the actual sound as: please load cups to tell operator reload more cups for continues production run. Any fault operator can review on interface and PC can record it in real time.
UV lamp equipped to guarantees food safety.
Anti-Static device ensures the cleanliness of the product and also guarantee for the subsequent heat-sealing process.
2.Ground Coffee Doser/Filler
Twin auger as volumetric dosing unit, drive by Schneider servo motor precisely control the auger spinning, achieve high output while ensuring stable mechanical action. Also install a compact agitator inside the hopper and making the coffee flow more uniform so that could guarantee accuracy of filling. Cone shaped hopper made of stain steel with a feature of quick dropping coffee.
Details about auger doser:
- In the bottom half, there are several precise augers. At the bottom half, the auger spins and pushes out the coffee to the bottom and finally comes out from the exit nozzle and gets into each capsule.
There are three things:
- The auger is precisely made; this would guarantee stable and accurate filling.
- The auger has a different diameter from top to bottom. This particular design is to reach both speed and accuracy. The top part of the auger has a bigger diameter, so more coffee is taken to be pushed into the bottom half filler tube.
Then the bottom has the smaller diameter auger part and reaches a higher filling speed. The coffee is also being compressed and becomes firm; this density change could allow the limited capsule/cup to be filled with more coffee. - The cup is covered and sealed during the filling process; this would help a lot to prevent fine coffee granules/powder fly out, especially when they stay on the cup’s mouth, and then sealed on the cup edge is related, and this isn’t good for sealing.
Our motor for control auger filler:
- Servo motor is better than stepper motors or other motors for better accuracy and maintenance-free.
- In Expak filling machines, we are only applying the brushless servo motors.
- It can keep higher precision for controlling the auger spin speed, and no need to maintain or replace the brush.
- Also, to make it easier to change different coffee amounts, instead of changing all three parameters, we designed a formula function that you can easily change the target weight by one setting change. The program will automatically calculate each setting accordingly and make the complete set for a servo to work
Nitrogen system
- Essential part for well-tasty coffee is Nitrogen injection system, we put from cup loaded, filling station, lid station, until sealed. We made this as long and complete nitrogen gas environment so as to reduce the oxygen eat up the coffee.
- Moreover, we also put nitrogen injection port to the coffee material hopper, so
- Protection gas like nitrogen or carbon dioxide could easily enter into hopper keep fresh for coffee.
3.Tamper and Cleaner
Tamper station could make the filled kcup of coffee flat and uniform meanwhile vacuum cleaner remove the dust left around the cup edge, to guarantee for sealing process.
4.Place Lid and then Lid Detection
Suction cup grabs lid from lid stacker and place it on cup
5.Double Heat Seal (seal by two steps for a better sealing)
It consists of a cylinder, supports positioning components, heat-block parts, and the heat -sealing top cylinder components and heating devices (heating rods, thermal power puppets, temperature control tables). The working process is as:
Heat up to a certain temperature needed.
Cylinder or top drive system (mechanical press) going down and touch the lid, press it.
The finished product comes out.
The beryllium copper head processed into the size of the cup (the copper material has the characteristics of fast thermal conductivity),
The temperature control system can also adjust the temperature by control panel. System don’t allow to work until heating reaches the setting volume.
Comparison of flat seal and curve seal：
- Curved ring sealing and normal flat seal: The curved ring seal is stronger by making a circle that press the lid melted into the cup plastic material. While the aluminum film is sealed, it is engraved into a circle of dents at the mouth of the cup to ensure that the seal is more closed. The flat sealed surface pressed down the heat.
- Especially in a single heat system, although the visual effect of the flat seal will be better, it is still recommended to use a stronger curved ring seal.
- The pressure gauge, the pressure gauge dial shows the pressure of this station when it is running. The manual button can be increased or reduced when observing the result of sealing, whether too much pressure cased over melting or not enough and wants more pressure
Why twice seal better than single seal:
- Twice seal system is relative stronger and safer comparing to single seal. After the first heat seal, which can also be called pre-seal with lower temperature and lower pressure, the lids are fixed on the cup, and even if some K cups are not completely blocked, the second heat seal is with higher pressure and higher temperature and seal again even some of cups may be not sealed during the first seal.
- Therefore, even when the customer chooses to use flat seal on both seal, the twice heat sealer system can meet the instability of the flat seal.
- Also, as first seal and second seal is different pressure and different pressure, so such two-step process, is more fluent during the sealing process, which also makes nice cups, while in a single sealer, you have to use higher temperature and higher pressure because you only have one sealer station and wants to guarantee the sealing, so sometimes you have to accept the unstable result such as over melting, too much pressure etc. and cups are not 100% nice.
6.Flipper
Two separate conveyor belts as two tracks for kcups sort into two lines, one as face up and one as face down, get ready for the robot to load them as the pro way packaging of kcup upside down to each other in the carton.
By the detector for eliminating empty pods, only the good finished kcups come over.
7.Grouper system to sort cups into different combination
One of track is receive positive kcups and another one receives reversed kcups by flipper device. A special designed tooling would sort as 3 or 4 cups by two groups then the YAHAMA Robot grab two times to combine them into one group which 6 or 8 kcups and load them into carton.
8.Automatic Carton Opener (open the carton and load into machine)
9.Place K Cup into each carton
Yamaha robot would be program as typical 12ct and 16ct or 24ct mode as each be 6(or8) as one group and then load twice by different height as two layers in each paper carton. Then, move to next and full auto close the carton solution: hot melt glue system
Hot melt glue system use glue gun to squeeze out the glue on a specific area of the box, and then press the side against the glue to close the box.
If you don’t want to cartoner to participate in the kcup packaging, we also considered it, you can see these two tracks, you just press the button on touch screen, they are drop down and you can place two boxes below the conveyor belt, also, the flip-flop diverter is our patent design that is a simple solution for bulk packaging like 48/50pcs one box or 96/98ct 100pcs one box, you just need to set a volume on touch screen; it will be automatic count and shift to the next box.