PETpla.net Insider 01+02 / 2019

45 PRODUCTS PET planet Insider Vol. 20 No. 01+02/19 www.petpla.net PET products From Greece to Saudi Arabia: the journey of a premium water A water with supe- rior flavour, winner of a Taste Award, deserves to become w e l l - k n o w n f a r beyond the borders of its country of origin. That’s why Eurowa- terland decided to send its brand Epirus Kostilatas Springs on a long journey, taking it from the green Atha- manian Mountains to the hot terrains of Saudi Arabia. The market that the brand has decided to take on is therefore a demanding one, where international brands such as Evian are already battling it out. In order to face such tough competition, Eurowaterland asked PET Engineering to design a premium bottle with as few strengthening ribs as possible, despite the lower weight requested, and with few decorative features. PET Engineering came up with a cylinder-shaped packaging solution with a mountain motif on the shoulder and a series of small ver- tical grooves. These grooves not only stiffen the bottle against the vertical load and prevent it from losing its radial shape, but also represent the narrow ravines of the Athamanian Mountains through which the water runs before reaching the end consumer, enriched with precious mineral salts. As well as designing the packaging, this project also involved making the container lighter by implementing a new 29/25 thread: PET Engineering handled the conversion of the Krones bottling line and supplied the set of moulds. www.petengineering.com Cap feeding and sorting systems technology NII Laser Technology has developed a new compact feeding unit for 28-38mm caps, the Gravity Sorter Com- pact (GS-C). Fully stainless-steel design provides various advan- tages including elimination of unwanted static current. Various closure design and dimensions can be handled in the same feeding unit with a simple and quick re-setup process with only few parts needing to be readjusted to work with closures of different diameter and height. The universal belt does not need any readjustments to run caps of different diameter. The productivity of the system is increasing to 200,000pcs/h. Moreover, the GS-C system does not need a compressed air connection that may be an advantage to certain production layouts. Its compact design together with a number of speed options combines efficiency and robustness, states the company. The sorting system can be used with various equipment to feed closures and caps to video inspection, printing machines, laser systems, closure counters and others. The feeding unit can be optionally equipped with a flow splitter or other device to divide closures on the belt. www.niilt.com New multi-module quality control – Torus’ TQ-Lab Torus Measurement Systems released the latest systems for plastic containers. After 5 years developing Torus integrated the latest measurement modules into a single system – The TQ-Lab. This devel- opment offers customers multiple quality control tests which can be selected by module to suit each customer require- ment. Offering non-contact and destruc- tive tests on both empty and filled con- tainers or preforms, this portable machine delivers reliable data to the network with no operator influence. This offers users multi-module gauging all controlled by one interface, simplifying the quality control process. The requirement of the TQ-Lab is to place batches of containers onto a turnaround conveyor and select the relevant program. A vision-system locates the position of the neck and with little programming, an intelligent force feedback gripper and multi-axis pick and place system transfers the product from the conveyor to the first measurement module. Here non-contact thickness and dimension measurements can be taken. Once the first module measure- ments are complete, the gripper transfers the container into the second module where non-contact internal diameter measurements are taken using miniature white light confocal technology. Finally, top load, volume capacity & container weight are measured in the third station before a final transfer to dedicated pass or fail bins. This multi-station concept, TQ-LAB, can be supplied as a manually loaded or fully automated package. As with all the Torus range, measurements are fully traceable and certified to UKAS standards and come with CE certification. The gauge utilises Torus’ own windows- based software GaugeXplorer, allowing customers to take control of their quality at a single control station. www.torus-group.com