The ideal drive for vacuum fillers
KEB Drives and motors in food processing machines
It takes several intermediate steps before a raw product becomes a ready-to-eat food product. Food processing machines, including vacuum fillers, are almost always used in this process. Both in craft businesses and in industrial production, these reliably fill food into different types of packaging – from cans to natural casings. But what is important when it comes to designing the ideal drive for vacuum fillers?
Whether it's a matter of cutting, sorting or filling: for decades, KEB Automation has been supplying automation and drive systems for single-axis applications or entire system solutions in the pack & food sector. Well-known manufacturers of vacuum fillers are also among KEB's customers and benefit from drive solutions from a single source. Vacuum fillers perform several functions at the same time, such as portioning, filling or twisting into various packaging materials while maintaining high precision in production. Particularly relevant here are the large vane cell feeders, which - tailored to the needs of the craft business – are responsible for the exact portioning of the filling material into cans, casings and other packaging.
To ensure that the vacuum filler's conveyors work reliably even with a high mass flow and at fast portioning speeds and are also particularly energy-efficient, it is important to have drive technology that is optimised precisely for these tasks. “The KEB Drives F6 and S6 are the ideal choice for vacuum fillers. Thanks to adaptable fieldbus and encoder interfaces, they can be seamlessly integrated into the machine manufacturer's existing control and motor systems,” says Thomas Tottleben, application engineer at KEB Automation. The S6 Servo Drives from KEB, for example, operate as position controllers in accordance with CiA402 and enable maximum positioning accuracy. This allows the filling process to be designed dynamically and the product is filled into the respective packaging medium with gram accuracy, even at high speeds.
Functionally safe drives
As a system provider, KEB supplies not only the drive controllers but also the appropriate motors for the vacuum fillers. “Depending on the requirements, servo motors from the TA series, geared motors and DL3 servo motors for vacuum fillers, for example, can be considered,” says Tottleben. The drives from KEB are rounded off by a wide range of solutions for sensor-based and sensorless safety. Safety functions integrated directly into the drives, such as STO (Safe Torque Off), not only increase safety for machine operators, but also reduce wiring costs. Last but not least, the Safe Door Lock Control (SDLC) function specially developed by KEB is also relevant for vacuum filling machines. It ensures that bonnets and lids on the machine are reliably locked at all times and only open when the motor has come to a safe standstill.
