Bottle filling machine with sensor and method thereof

Abstract

A filling apparatus and method including a carrier for transporting containers and having a plurality of valves, each of the valves being opened for an individual, specific period of time to control a flow of liquid into the respective containers, while the containers are transported by the carrier. An exit feed path transports the containers after the containers have been filled, and a sensor, such as a camera, detects a level of liquid in the respective containers, while the containers are on the exit feed path. The sensor produces a signal that is stored as data representing the level of liquid for the individual containers. The data is then tracked and used for valve optimization. A period of time that each individual valve is opened for subsequent fillings is adjusted based on the signal and the historical performance of each valve.

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0001] 1. Field of the Invention [0002] Apparatuses and methods consistent with the present invention relate generally to regulating the dispersion of liquid into a container. More specifically, the invention relates to detecting a level of the liquid in the container, so as to obtain data and appropriately adjust a valve used to regulate the flow of the liquid. [0003] 2. Description of the Related Art [0004] In general, the bottling of beverages, sauces, liquid spices, etc., requires adjusting the bottling amount within a predetermined range. For example, it is known to regulate an amount of flow into a container using cam actuated filling valves, wherein containers are conveyed along circular path on a carrier, while being filled via nozzles that direct fluid or other material contents downwardly into the containers. In such a configuration, a carousel rotates to move the nozzles synchronously with the passing containers and the cam moves the nozzles do...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0009] An exemplary aspect of present invention is to provide a filling method and device that is capable of adjusting flow amounts based on monitoring current and / or past filling levels. It is an additional aspect to provide a filling method and device which could be augmented by other sensory inputs, besides the fill levels, to improve filling performance.

[0018] An exemplary feature of the invention is the elimination of volumetric flow or mass flow control sensors at each individual valve. Such flow or mass control sensors dedicated to each valve are expensive and, in accordance with the present invention, can be replaced by a valve that opens and closes based on a timing recipe, rather than a sensor that actually measures a volumetric fluid amount. This is an economical advantage because flow control sensors are relatively expensive and the more sophisticated mass flow sensors are even more costly. Therefore, the present invention is able to eliminate the flow sensors in favor of another technology which can potentially provide additional functionality and substantial cost savings.

[0020] An additional feature of the present invention reduces an occurrence of a single anomaly that causes an incorrect valve setting change. This is accomplished by looking at a statistically significant number of measurements before a change is made in a timing recipe or a filling time period. By looking at enough filled bottles to provide a statistically significant sampling, the mean, standard deviation and statistical trends for each valve can be determined with a high confidence level and the system can then correct the timing recipe accordingly.

Problems solved by technology

However, such a cam arrangement is susceptible to various types of mechanical wear and misadjustment leading to inaccurate or inconsistent filling levels.

In addition, a skilled technician is needed to adjust, maintain, and calibrate a substantial number of cam operated devices, which can result in increased costs, lower productivity, and increased labor.

Stopping to make such mechanical adjustments or to change to a new filling job also contributes to additional down-time on the filling line, which is very expensive in terms of lost production.

Because the flow sensors are relatively expensive, it becomes a substantial expense to build machines that have the same number of costly flow sensors as filling valves.

However, this process requires a complex, close integration between the camera's findings and the valve control electronics to effect a precise shut-off.

In addition, because the camera is actually viewing the containers as they are being filled, turbulence is induced during the imaging period.

If the turbulence is not consistent or the system is lacking a means to correct for the turbulence, such image based monitoring could vary and be inaccurate.

Also, the camera is not infinitely fast and must snap images periodically.

Even with present day cameras, there is an amount of inaccuracy due to factors such as, illumination levels, camera scan speed, image transmission rate, band-widths, image analysis time, and other latencies that necessarily occur inside a computer driven imaging system.

The inherently larger field of view reduces systemic resolution since the number of pixels in the camera is spread over a larger view area.

The container is inherently viewed from different angles for each image snap which has a detrimental effect on the quality of the image.

However, measurements from the image are still limited by the speed of the camera and require high speed electronic “hand-shaking” with valve control electronics, such that the system will not tolerate any level of indeterminacies in the time that elapses from the initial image capture to sending a valve shut-off signal, resulting in increased expense and complexity.

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