33 TRADE SHOW REVIEW PETplanet Insider Vol. 24 No. 06/23 Flexible and sustainable capping On Arol‘s booth, visitors experienced the latest capping technologies on product safety, a view on circular economy and on more sustainable packaging materials: spindles and heads for ROPP aluminium caps on glass and can bottles, smart instrumented bottles (wireless Bluetooth torque and top load tester for off and on-line dynamic measurements), decappers, decrowners. The company also presented tests on paper caps, thanks to the Arol LabV, a laboratory capper able to measure: approach angle, screwing stroke and angle, flat angle, total cam stroke. Arol also presented everything they have on offer for PET bottlers from an environmental point of view: from the laboratory phase – with the robotic station ClosureXpertLab, where new ultra-light and/or tethered caps are tested, including extra-light bottles with different percentages of recycled plastic- to the caps feeding phase with visual quality control, up to the de-dusting phase (pre-capping), and to the fully servo-controlled capping cycle (Equatorque IQ- Evo). The Arol capping technology is based on a special direct drive technology that is fully software modelled. This approach allowed the implementation of a “Torque Virtual Sensor” as well as a new non-invasive control of all parameters of the capping head during its lifetime. New algorithms for “position approach” and “application angle detection” at each capping cycle (Arol Thread Engage Technology) are available. New sensors have been developed for automatic, non-invasive wear detection of plastic rollers and for machine monitoring, such as temperatures and vibration of critical parts or detection and prediction of mechanical anomalies (Arol Node Sensors Wireless Technology). Great attention is paid to flexibility: for example, the ability to handle different combinations of closures on the same machine, such as plastic threaded closures, crown caps and ROPP closures. Special attention is also given to full quality control such as microplastic or the packaging using RoboQCS and subsequent feedback to the capper and the entire capping process to keep it stable and measurable. www.arol.com Laboratory capper for capping tests and small production batches able to set up different values for cam profile; on site, the application of a paper cap on a PET preform was shown.
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