What Packaging Equipment Do I Need?

If you are a start up company, the pages and machines found within the Liquid Packaging Solutions website may be slightly overwhelming. There are many different categories of packaging machines, with many different packaging machines in each of those categories! This article will briefly cover the different phases of a standard packaging system and some of the options for each phase!

CONTAINER PREPARATION AND LOADING

Before reaching the rinsing, filling, capping, labeling and other possible packaging phases, you must first figure out how you will get your bottle to the packaging line. This can be as simple as using manual labor to place the bottles on a loading turntable or conveyor, or as fully automated as using a blow molder to make your bottle, dump it into a hopper, ride a bottle elevator to an unscrambler to a bottle orienter to the conveyor system and on down the line to additional packaging phases. Of course, there are numerous automation options in between these two.

The obvious factor here is the speed of production. Manual labor may work well for smaller production runs. A tabletop filler with a handheld chuck capper will get even the smallest start up business a higher level of production and efficiency. However, some level of automation is required if you are filling thousands of bottles per hour with your packaging system. Ideally, you want to find a level of automation that will work for your current needs, but that can also be upgraded as your business grows.

BOTTLE CLEANING

In many industries, cleansing the bottles and containers before they enter the fill, cap and label portion of the packaging system is not only a good idea, but it is a necessity. Liquid Packaging Solutions offers both wet rinsers and bottle vacuums in various levels of automation for bottle cleaning. The wet rinser will spray water or a cleaning solution into the bottle and rinse the bottle out to cleanse it of any debris. The air rinser uses vacuum nozzles to rinse debris into an easily removable and cleanable waste reservoir.

You must take into account your product and your production needs at this point. If your product is a consumable, you will probably want to consider adding a wet rinser or bottle vacuum to your packaging line. If your production consists of small runs, a manual wet rinser may fit your needs. If you are a higher production facility, you may require an inline wet rinser or bottle vacuum.

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