Form Fill Seal Pump with Dosing Mode for Smearing Products
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Solution Overview
Problem
Form fill seal apparatuses face challenges in sealing products like blue cheese, which smears and contaminates the seal area, leading to compromised seal strength and increased defect rates, often requiring larger seals or different equipment, increasing complexity and cost.
Innovation Solution
A form fill seal apparatus with a positive displacement pump operating in both continuous and dosing modes, using a sinusoidal speed profile and opposing squeegee rollers that remain separated in dosing mode, along with a mechanical bag deflator and plunger to control product flow and minimize contamination, ensuring consistent seal formation.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If a squeegee system is used to drive product away from the seal area, then seal formation is enabled, but product contamination remains severe for smearing products like blue cheese
Solution Approach 1:
The squeegee system is made dynamically adjustable through variable speed control and positioning mechanisms, allowing the squeegee speed to be independently controlled relative to the bag formation speed. This dynamic adjustment enables optimal product removal without contamination for difficult-to-handle products like blue cheese, while maintaining reliable seal formation.
Solution Approach 2:
The system changes operational parameters by allowing independent variation of squeegee speed, bag formation speed, and seal timing. This parameter control enables optimization of the squeegee action to completely remove smearing products from the seal area before sealing occurs, eliminating contamination while maintaining seal reliability.
2Reliability
If seal size is increased to enhance seal strength, then seal reliability improves, but device complexity and cost increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system replaces purely mechanical seal size increases with a controlled fluid dynamics approach. By using a dosing pump to precisely control product flow and a variable speed squeegee system to dynamically remove product, the patent achieves reliable seals without needing larger seal areas, thereby avoiding increased device complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
Instead of changing the physical dimension of the seal (size), the system changes operational parameters including product flow rate, squeegee speed, and timing control. These parameter adjustments ensure complete product removal from the seal area, achieving strong seals with standard seal sizes and without increasing equipment complexity.
3Productivity
If continuous product supply is used, then productivity is maintained, but product contamination of the seal area increases
Solution Approach 1:
The continuous product supply is segmented into controlled portions using a dosing pump that delivers product in measured amounts. This segmentation allows the squeegee system to effectively remove product between bags while maintaining continuous overall production flow, preventing contamination without sacrificing productivity.
Solution Approach 2:
The system implements periodic dosing of product followed by periodic squeegee action to remove product before each seal. This periodic cycle maintains continuous productivity while ensuring complete product removal from the seal area, eliminating contamination while sustaining high-speed operation.
4Reliability
If different equipment is used for smearing products, then seal quality improves, but device complexity and cost increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system achieves multi-functionality by enabling a single form-fill-seal machine to handle both easy-to-squeegee products and difficult smearing products like blue cheese. The variable speed squeegee and dosing pump combination provides universal capability across different product types, eliminating the need for separate equipment while maintaining high seal quality.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
The apparatus effectively seals a variety of products, including those that smear, by controlling product flow and minimizing contamination, reducing defect rates and maintaining seal integrity, while allowing for consistent weight control and reduced complexity and cost.
Implementation Method 1
The positive displacement pump is structurally configured to operate in a continuous operating mode and a dosing operating mode
Implementation Method 2
The positive displacement pump has a sinusoidal speed profile. This profile reduces the impact of product contacting the hot seal area
Implementation Method 3
a pair of opposing squeegee rollers configured to sandwich the tubular film (and squeeze out contents therebetween)
Implementation Method 4
A product fill tube is located inside the apparatus, which introduces product into the tube. A cross seal is formed in the tube to form the bottom seal of a bag
Data Source
AI summary
A form fill seal apparatus for forming and filling a plurality of bags with a product having a tube formation assembly forming a tubular film, a bag forming assembly configured to form transverse seals and to cut the tubular film to form bags. A product delivery system is provided to deliver product from a positive displacement pump to a product delivery tube. A control system is structurally configured to direct the positive displacement pump to operate in two different modes, a first, continuous operating mode and a second, dosing operating mode. A method of filling is likewise disclosed.