Sack filling system for the manufacture of batteries

To bring the supply of material from their upstream industrial dryer process, our team designed an industrial equipment solution that would allow a forklift operator to dock stainless steel IBC to a station for the purpose of safely emptying the toxic chemical powder in a contained and efficient manner. The station is designed with centering plates that guide the discharge outlet of the IBC into a docking cone fitted with a socket joint. This elastomer joint provides the necessary dust tight connection to fully contain the powder while the rigid container is unloading. An operator only needs to open and close the butterfly valve to evacuate the product. The IBCFlow®01 station can accommodate containers and totes up to a capacity of 2 tons.

Once concern of this powder was its tendency to form small lumps, or powder agglomerates, after cooling off from the industrial drying process. Therefore, a small vibratory sieving device was installed directly under the IBC emptying station to sieve out any larger lumps. An offset vibrating motor is connected to the body of this flat deck screener. As powder enters the inlet and falls against the mesh screen, the motor vibrates at high frequency to aid the smaller particles through the mesh aperture and the oversized particles across the face of the mesh and out a side port exit. Fines, or good material, falls through the center discharge outlet into the process below it. These industrial screeners are used for automatic quality control of the packaging process, as well as protection of the industrial process equipment from foreign materials that may otherwise damage them. Production throughput rates on these industrial sieves range from 1.5 to 6.5 tons per hour, depending on the material and bulk density.

In order to achieve accurate packaging weights of the 22 kg paper sacks, our team integrated into the system an industrial screw powder dosing unit. Screw feeders as they are more commonly called, use a small feed hopper to hold the exact amount of powder required for the package amount, an agitator to help keep the material evenly flowing and a small auger with tube extension to meter small amounts of powder into the package below it. The assembly is mounted on load cells so the PLC can communicate with the equipment to read how much weight is leaving the dosing hopper. This type of industrial function is referred to as LIW or loss-in-weight. By automatically reading the amount of powder that is leaving the screw feeder, an operator does not need to waste time on scooping or extracting powder to get the right packaging weight. Screw feeders can be modified with different types of auger designs, depending on the density and flowability of the industrial powder, and can achieve dosing accuracies within a few grams.

Fitted below the industrial screw feeder is a sack filling station with inflatable connection seal. The bags had sealable inner liners to protect against moisture and oxygen. The operator places the bag under the filling head and the inner liner around the inflatable gasket. Pressurized air is fed into the seal and thus provides a dust tight connection, securing the bag in place. As product is metered into the paper bag, a small reverse pulse jet industrial filter is connected to the industrial fill spout. As air escapes the bag, very fine particulates are directed by the double jacketed fill head and out through a dust filter connection port. The dust is caught in the filter cartridges built into the station, and clean air exits into the work area. The compressed air tank sends blasts of air through the filter and cleans excessive build-up of dust. In this way, product can be reclaimed into the bag station below.

The control panel tells the screw feeder to stop when the required weight is reached. The seal deflates and the motorized belt conveyor transfers the bag to the welding station where the operator places the liner and bag in between the thermos-plates for water tight closure. Once sealed, the bag is transferred to a kick plate where the bag is laid flat for the palletizing operations. There an operator can use the supplied vacuum sack tube lifter. This industrial vac lifter takes away all strain and risk from lifting heavy loads by using suction on the bag to displace its weight. The suction boot is connected to a flexible accordion style hose, supported by a floor mounted jib crane. The operator only needs to use one hand to lift, move and lower the bag onto its pallet. The bag lifting station improves workplace ergonomics, operator safety and production efficiency.