PETpla.net Insider 10 / 2016

LABELLING 57 PET planet Insider Vol. 17 No. 10/16 www.petpla.net as swing tops, embossing and even hairline mould seams are identified by camera and used as reference points for the adjustment. The servos below the platforms then rotate and orientate the bottles so precisely that the labels always remain stuck exactly in the positions intended for them. This prac- tically excludes false positioning. The same applies to bubbles and folds which can occur e.g. when glueing over the mould seam.” Does this servo-controlled adjustment have other posi- tive effects? Müller: “Definitely! Orientation marks are no longer necessary; this makes the containers cheaper. The risk of material breakage and wear are reduced at the same time. Because force is exerted during a conventional mechanical adjustment: special fingers engage with the rotat- ing bottles. This can damage them. The fingers themselves wear out eventually. By comparison everything works completely without contact using servo technology. And where there is no contact, there is no wear.” Even the servos themselves, as mentioned above, are practically non-wearing. But what happens should one fail? Müller: “Replacing the motors is very easy. Any mechanic can deal with this in no time at all without having to call an electrician. The new servo is then programmed fully auto- matically at the machine afterwards.” Is it possible to combine several labelling procedures in one machine using servo technology? Müller: “Yes, we have recently installed such a flexible labeller for an important Russian fruit juice and baby food producer. The machines of the Heuft Tornado flex series apply self-adhesive front and back labels to bottles and tamper evident labels to food jars from above first. Their safety tabs are then folded down and rolled on neatly. Wrap-around labels are applied afterwards aligned for this purpose. This functions absolutely precisely because the servos always know the exact position of the con- tainers as soon as the lid labels are present. In addition they ensure a fast change to another type of packaging, because completely different rotat- ing cams are required for the wrap- around labelling of baby food jars and the self-adhesive labelling of juice bottles. This changeover is possible at the push of a button thanks to the servo technology!” Mr Müller, thank you for talking to us! www.heuft.com