Two conveyor belts and two Elmoprint SDA dispensers mounted on a sturdy rack are the basic components of this solution that precisely applies labels to both the top and bottom of your product. The solution is IP66 rated and designed to work round the clock.
Method:
To achieve this extremely high precision, the solution has two frequency controlled conveyor belts that are closely spaced in continuation of one another.
The top label is applied while the item is on the first belt: a sensor scans the items to ensure highly precise label placement as items pass the dispenser.
The bottom dispenser’s tongue is placed in the space between the conveyor belts and points up towards the bottom of the product.
The item is scanned again to ensure the machine knows the item’s position. After this, the product is fed across the labelling tongue that dispenses a label.
The label-dispensing speed is controlled by a servomotor synchronised with the speed of the conveyor belts. This enables highly precise label placement.
Scanning is key to ensuring that our equipment dispenses the labels precisely every time, and we have vast experience of finding the most suitable method – even for products with dissimilar dimensions that don’t weigh very much or are otherwise difficult to place on the belt.
To label an item, a set of side belts needs to be fitted. These side belts grasp the product and feed it securely and stably across the transition between the two conveyor belts as the label is being dispensed.
Control:
The whole process is controlled by a lightning-speed motion controller, whose settings are entered on an HMI touchscreen. The settings for the respective products are saved as recipes, which enables you to manage several types of items on the same line.
The dispenser can be controlled by selecting from external recipes and it can be included in the general line controls for sharing start and stop signals, for instance.
Dispenser advantages:
- Stable and reliable, even in harsh manufacturing environments (IP66 rating)
- Touchscreen for which all user settings are set and saved as recipes
- Two servomotors can be mounted for electronically adjustable web tension for plastic labels. This maintains constant tension on the label roll while taking account of the fact that the backing paper can give way during rapid acceleration
- Simple to operate during format changeover and it manages 99 recipes
- Maximises uptime
- Guarantees high capacity and unparalleled precision
- The equipment handles semi-automatic and fully automatic labelling feed-in so regardless of whether your products are manually placed (such as on a rotary table) or fed onto the belt from a filling machine, the equipment receives the starting signals it needs
Options:
In addition, we advise you to consider whether to supplement your new system with:
- A queue monitor, which prevents the system from advancing items if a bottleneck develops on the belt, while sending a stop signal to the filler machine, for instance, at the same time
- Tip-over protection, which stops the line if a product tips over
- A rejecting unit that rejects items deemed faulty, e.g. if a lid is not correctly attached or if a product is below the minimum weight
- Pull-out unit that makes it easy and convenient to replace label rolls
Master/backup:
If you need to be able to replace a label roll while the line keeps running, you can choose a master/backup solution fitted with two identical dispensers. While the roller is being replaced on one dispenser, the other takes over the labelling process.
There are other benefits of having a backup dispenser, because it can ensure that labels are applied to all products, if it detects a label is missing on the label web, for instance. By having fluorescent material in the labels and a luminescence sensor mounted on the machine, the secondary dispenser will apply labels to any items that might have been skipped by the master dispenser.
Combinations:
The machine can combine different solutions so it comprises multiple dispensers to label products from different sides.
- Top
- Bottom
- Side
- Wrap-around
Printing solution:
Another popular solution is to mount a printing solution on the dispenser for printing a date, batch no., list of ingredients, logo or other data on the labels.
Hot-stamp coders
Thermal transfer printers
Inkjet printers
Be inspired:
The solutions seen below depict the principles of top and bottom labelling.
The dispensers are configured for customers’ specific labelling tasks.
We will gladly supply a custom solution for you.
