Have you ever seen a filling machine that can "taste"? Director Li of the Fujian Jam Factory asked this question when he came to inspect the machine last week. Their newly developed mango mousse sauce is so thick that it can hang on the spoon, but the existing filling and packaging machines either block the pipe or the weight of each can is a little less than half a spoonful. We are too familiar with this kind of trouble - from toner as thin as water to sesame paste as sticky as asphalt, fluid viscosity varies in thousands of ways. Why do we require the same equipment to do everything?
Traditional filling and packaging machines are like rote test takers, who read the parameters after adjusting them. When it comes to materials with large viscosity fluctuations, either you lose money if you fill too much or get scolded if you fill too little. The old master in our workshop often jokes: "If you fill a honey filling machine with ketchup, it will trip itself in a hurry!"
The experience of an oyster sauce factory in Qingdao last spring became a turning point. Their filling and packaging machine always had problems during the season change - when it was cold, the oyster sauce thickened and could not be filled enough, and when the temperature rose, it overflowed everywhere. Our technical team spent three days on the spot and found that 90% of the equipment on the market relied on fixed parameters and would not adjust in real time according to the material status. This discovery gave birth to the current fluid viscosity adaptive system, which simply means giving the machine a "tactile nerve".
The core of this system is the intelligent viscosity sensor hidden in the filling nozzle. It can sense the flow state of the material within 0.5 seconds, which is more sensitive than the old master's fingers. For example, when filling shampoo, when the viscosity of the batch of raw materials suddenly increases, the equipment will automatically increase the pump pressure and extend the filling time. Last month, when debugging a daily chemical factory in Guangdong, their R&D director stared at the screen and exclaimed: "I just finished processing hyaluronic acid essence, and I didn't have to stop the machine for debugging when I switched to scrub!" You may ask: Isn't this just adding an extra sensor? In fact, the key lies in the dynamic control algorithm. Just like an old chef weighing a spoon by feel, our dynamic control module for filling accuracy will combine material characteristics, ambient temperature and humidity, and even pipeline pressure for comprehensive calculation. Some customers have found in tests that when processing high-viscosity materials such as honey, the filling error is more accurate than the industry standard, and even the wall-mounted materials in the can are calculated clearly. What makes us most proud is the actual case last winter. A hot sauce brand in Northeast China needs to be filled in an environment of -20¡æ, and the oil is frozen into a paste. Ordinary filling and packaging machines went on strike directly, but our equipment reversed the heating strategy through viscosity data, and filled while heating, and made the production line run. Later, I heard that the limited edition hot sauce was sold out in seconds on the e-commerce platform, and the customer sent two boxes as a thank-you gift. Of course, technological breakthroughs are always accompanied by repeated trial and error. In the early stage of research and development, we were troubled by chocolate sauce - this semi-solid material needs to be kept warm and controlled when filling. During one test, the chocolate suddenly crystallized and blocked the entire filling head like a sculpture. It was this accident that gave birth to the current pulse cleaning function. Now when encountering abnormal viscosity changes, the equipment will automatically start pipeline maintenance, which is three times faster than manual reaction.
Watching the new generation of filling and packaging machines in the workshop come off the line one after another, the old masters have a new fun: "teasing" the machine with all kinds of strange materials. From cheese sauce that can be drawn to loquat paste with fruit particles, this fluid viscosity adaptive system can deal with every move. Some customers joked that this machine should take a "fluid taster" certificate. In my opinion, it is much more reliable than a taster. After all, it doesn't feel tired even if it works for 24 hours continuously.
In this era of pursuing flexible production, rigid equipment is destined to be eliminated. If your production line is still frequently changing lines for materials with different viscosities, you might as well try this "thinking" filling system. Next time we meet, maybe you will be like the boss of the jelly pudding factory in Zhejiang, patting the machine and saying, "This guy is better at reading people's expressions than my workshop director!"
