Weighing
Smarter cart
CJ Waterhouse’s automated minor ingredients system, The Smart Cart – G3, now uses RFT positioning and wireless communication systems.
he semi-automatic and subsequent fully automatic minor ingredient systems were first developed over 10 years ago to overcome the negative constraints associated with more traditional systems where feeders are positioned around a static central weigh vessel. Such systems can suffer from lower accuracy, contamination, slow throughput and limited or no expansion possibilities.
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SMART CART PHILOSOPHY The Smart Cart overcomes these issues by moving individual weigh carriages with pre-loaded receptacles (bag, bucket etc.) to the feeder stations around a monorail track. In this way the raw ingredients are weighed directly into the container on the carriage from the feed station therefore eliminating cross contamination.
Each carriage incorporated a high accuracy force motion platform scale to give typical weighing accuracies on minor ingredients of +/- 3g or better. As the smart cart carriages run upon a continuous monorail track numerous carriages can be added to increase overall throughput. This
44 March 2014 Solids and Bulk Handling
system can also reduce / eliminate costly downtime due to weigher malfunctions as each weigh carriage can be simply removed from the track for maintenance or repairs. The remaining carriages will then continue the weighing operations or an additional spare carriage can be added to maintain the same throughput.
It is also possible due to the unique philosophy of the Smart cart to incorporate additional feed stations and track extensions at a later date if expansion should be required. The fully automatic version of the Smart Cart manufactures bags on-line before loading them onto the carriage clamp system. The weigh carriage then proceeds around the track system collecting the required ingredients in accordance with the pre-specified recipe. On completion of the batch the bag is printed with a barcode or batch information before being sealed and ejected onto the downstream accumulation system. Semi & fully automatic systems for bucket, container and bulk IBC can also be supplied although the latter would normally be located upon a linear track.
www.solidsandbulk.co.uk
SYSTEM DEVELOPMENTS
The Smart Cart is now into its 3rd generation (G3), previous developments from G1 to G2 have included; increased speed / throughput, packet separation and dosing systems, variable bag length and control / automation improvements. CJ Waterhouse is now at manufacture stage of the G3 version of the Smart Cart for supply to the UK custom compounding company Berwin Polymer processing Group in Lydney. Berwin’s Manchester plant first introduced the prototype semi-automatic system in 2002 and upgraded to the fully automatic system in 2004. The automatic system has now been in operation for over 10 years. Following Berwin’s recent expansion to the additional site in Lydney they are now looking to increase their minor ingredients output at the new site by the acquisition of a second Smart cart System.
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