CAPS & CLOSURES 26 PETplanet Insider Vol. 23 No. 01+02/22 www.petpla.net Full precision during tethered cap inspection Non-returnable PET bottles with tethered caps present great challenges for the inline quality inspection in the filling and packaging process. Heuft Systemtechnik GmbH has prepared its technology for the 360° cap inspection accordingly with intensive tests, new types of software and special lighting. With success as an installation at an important German bottler shows. CAPS & CLOSURES The first ones are already available on the market and in the middle of 2024 they will finally become compulsory: PET bottles with tethered caps. From then on, at the latest, disposable plastic beverage containers must be equipped with new types of caps that remain firmly attached to them even after opening. This is prescribed by the EU directive 2019/904 Single Use Plastics (SUP) in order to counteract the littering of the environment by plastic waste. However, the implementation poses major challenges for bottlers and their suppliers, which affect practically the entire production, filling and packaging process, from the stretch blow moulding machine to the filling and sealing machine to the QA equipment. Accordingly it is important for all those involved to prepare PET lines for the new closure type in good time. Heuft Systemtechnik GmbH has already made an early start with this. Prepared for the unforeseeable The complete quality and integrity inspection of simple symmetrical closures already succeeds reliably with the proven standard version of the Heuft FinalView II Cap even if in some cases it is not yet really foreseeable what faults and defects could occur on them in the future. It is a clear advantage that unknown objects are always displayed as faults on the highresolution detection images which it generates. However, deviations from conventional plastic screw closures can be specifically taught in as good with the smart Heuft reflexx A.I. image processing. New features, such as initially unusually large gaps between the lid and the tamper-evidence band, are then no longer interpreted as faults but as typical for the appearance of the respective closure shape. PET full containers with corresponding features are no longer rejected; with full detection accuracy, the false rejection rate remains at the lowest level. Optimised closure wall inspection of asymmetrical tethered caps It is considerably more demanding to design the precise complete inspection of asymmetrical tethered closures without any gaps or “blind” areas. Heuft divides them into two main groups: Some have a completely symmetrical appearance in the top-down view but show clear asymmetrical structures in the side view due to their tether mechanism. The others even deviate from the usual rotational symmetry from both perspectives. Responsible for this is their protruding hinge. Thanks to specific software upgrades the Heuft FinalView II Cap can now inspect both subtypes in the usual precision without any compromises. This also applies to the completely asymmetrical closures which it examines in the pilot line of a major soft drinks producer. The 26/22 tethered caps with specially developed and standardised GME 30.40 neck finishes (CETIE code) clip conveniently into a fixed position after opening, but remain connected to the container. They are not only lower and almost half a gram lighter than conventional PET bottle screw caps. Their deviating cap shape due to their protruding hinge was the reason why the closure wall inspection of the Heuft FinalView II Cap could not evaluate the images from the four cameras at first because Connected to the Heuft Spectrum II VX fill management system the further developed Heuft FinalView II Cap not only finds incorrectly applied tethered caps but also their causes. A current software upgrade now makes a complete covering closure wall inspection without blind spots possible even in the case of asymmetrical tethered caps.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTY0MjI=