Optical process for weight determination
In the PETView Base Quality system, a CCD camera inspects from above through the bottle mouth the bottle base illuminated from below, with ultra-durable LEDs serving as lighting units.
Depending on the shape and intensity of the base lens configuration, an appropriate amount of light is passed to the camera where a picture is thus formed of the container base that reflects the material distribution in the bottle base very well indeed: it shows the unstretched portions of the base as darker, and the stretched ones as lighter areas. Or to put it more simply: the larger the dark ring is in the picture of the bottle base, the more material the base contains. The change in the base’s weight is then determined from the ratio of dark and light proportions in the picture.
The Krones PETView is used as the basic machine.
This is an inspection unit integrated into the stretch blow-moulding machine and amenable to modular expansion, by adding additional inspection units. The stretch blow-moulder’s touchscreen serves for display and adjustment. The same components are utilised for the PETView Base Quality as for the other inspection units, covering base, neck finish and sidewall.

Rejection and check-back
The results obtained from the measurements allow for two responses: firstly rejecting (obviously enough) any container whose measuring results lie outside the permissible specifications.
And secondly also a check-back message to the production system responsible if deviations from the specification are encountered repeatedly, so as to enable counter-measures to be taken. Whereas the initial response remains referenced to precisely one container, a certain “history” must first be established for the second, so as to be able to define appropriate counter-measures. A deviation in just one container would not be enough to trigger a counter-measure here. These measures serve firstly to prevent individual faulty containers from getting as far as the production line and secondly to ensure that the entire blow-moulding process never takes a wrong turning.
The process reaches a degree of accuracy in which 90 per cent of all values measured for the base weight determined deviate by a maximum of 2.5 per cent of the base weight, and by a minimum of 0.2 grams. Note that the value measured is subject to the influence of the preform quality and the blow-air quality involved. A brightness change due to darker or lighter material than that used for calibration, or to pressure-relief misting, for instance, may lead to a shift in the mean value measured as compared to the mean value weighed.

Direct correction with Contiloop
The Contiloop system offers a platform for compiling control loops reflecting any particular customer’s specific requirements. Basically, each measured variable, meaning each quality criterion available, can be linked to each process parameter (manipulated variable) available, in a closed loop.
The selection of the measured and manipulated variables concerned will depend on the bottle/preform combination involved in each case, and is user-settable. The measured variables offered by the PETView unit also include, in addition to base information like stretching and weight, the detection of pearling, off-centre or how well the base’s petals have been moulded. Manipulated variables available include (in a standard process) the pre-blowing pressure P1, the pre-blow timing, the final blow-moulding pressure P2, the final-blow-moulding moment, the preform’s setpoint temperature or the zone power levels. Goal: controlled quality criteria forming a trend are to be kept inside predefined specifications. Contiloop can only ever be used to combat trend movements. Individual non-conforming bottles will be rejected, in response to a signal from the PETView inspection unit.
The closed-loop concept implemented in the Krones stretch blow-moulding machine enables the blow-moulding process to be directly corrected, resulting in a smaller number of PET containers rejected and in better machine efficiency, with concomitant cost savings. Identifying faulty material distribution in freshly blow-moulded PET containers permits automatic correction of the stretch blow-moulding parameters involved, thus contributing towards process sequence optimisation.
PETView Base Quality online measuring technology can be retrofitted to existing Contiform systems, with outputs (depending on the stretch blow-moulder involved) of up to 72,000 containers an hour. The Contiloop control system can be retrofitted to Contiform machines as from construction year 2006.

On the Krones stand in Hall B6, visitors will find high-performance systems for both wet and dry ends, intelligent IT solutions, customised material flow concepts, and much, much more.

The issue of sustainability also plays a prominent role among Krones’ exhibits. After all, the food and beverage industries, in particular, have made sustainability an integrative constituent of their brand images, in the full knowledge that more and more consumers nowadays decide for or against a brand on the basis of ecological criteria. Krones has taken this fact fully on board, and has accordingly incorporated the issue of sustainability in its enviro programme, which renders visible and tangible the economic and ecological commitment to responsible resource husbandry that Krones prioritises in its machinery design work, enabling the users of Krones’ technology to manifest their conservationist credentials.

Making optimum use of your capacities
How available capacities can be utilised to still better effect, how production costs can be permanently downsized: this is what Krones Life-Cycle Service (LCS) will be demonstrating with a variety of responsive programmes, including productivity optimisation, maintenance, support, design and training.

Krones AG, Hall B 6

05.29.2009

Through the Lifecycle Service Portal, the machine’s owners are directly networked to Krones, with access to all the latest upgrade options for their machines. This means that in future all clients can quickly generate over the internet a quotation request covering the upgrades on offer for their specific machines. In an upcoming phase, the Lifecycle Service Portal is to be expanded and offered worldwide.

02.02.2009

In the new interactive internet portal called “LCS Remote Service”, Krones has grouped together all the existing online features being offered by its Lifecycle Service operation. With an appropriate access authorisation, both Krones customers and Krones staff will in future be able to access the portal all over the world, even during trips. For the first time, it incorporates all the LCS remote services, for direct utilisation. These include the Help Desk with assistance for technological questions, remote diagnostics and teleservice, the eGate and eCat spare parts catalogue and shop, plus agreement inquiries and the range of upgrade options, which every customer can in future generate himself for his own machinery.

Hall 3 Stand F32

Open training courses for skilling new staff
The Krones Academy supports Krones’ customers with appropriate skilling measures for new and existing staff. Besides the training provided when a new machine is purchased, the Academy’s catalogue also offers a choice of open training courses, which clients can select and book to suit their own specific needs. This option makes it even easier to send staff for training independently of a machinery purchase, and is available in the firm’s training centres worldwide for a variety of different target groups, like operators, maintenance staff, electricians and IT engineers, supervisors and plant managers.

Hall 7a / Stand 216

Take Schiffers Food B.V. in Hoensbroek, for example: this soft-drinks producer, owned by the Dutch brewery Bavaria N.V., asked Krones’ PET Design people to develop a new PET bottle family comprising two 0.5-l bottles, three 0.75-l bottles and one 1.5-l bottle. Moreover, Krones LCS adapted the technical equipment of the entire line. This complete-service package makes Krones able to support a line’s make-over for handling another bottle shape from beginning to end, covering the entire machine portfolio needed.

First of all, the salient bottle characteristics like diameter, height, label size and the bottle volume were specified. Three-dimensional CAD data were generated, providing a first visual impression of what the bottle would look like. Sample bottles produced on a laboratory stretch blow-moulder in the pilot plant of Krones’ PET Technology Centre served for further assessment by the client. In addition to bottle production proper in the Contiform S16 stretch blow-moulder with 16 new moulds, this also included the AirCo conveyor, and retrofits to the filler, the Contiroll and Canmatic labellers, the SynCo bottle conveyor right through to the Variopac shrink-wrapper for trays, and the Robot 3A palletiser.

The LCS people conducted test runs and, following an installation and commissioning phase of about one week, they handed over the line, incorporating all the handling parts, at the efficiency level agreed. Krones’ LCS Department was asked to handle the change-over procedure for two more bottle sizes, likewise with all the requisite handling parts.

Following more than a year of field experience with the vibration units, the following results have been verified:

• Increased yield
• Improved lauterability of the wort
• Improved filtering characteristics of the beers
• Reduced oxygen loading in the mash
• The vibration units can be fitted to every tun after appropriate technical clarification.