Preform Handling Device for Wide-Mouth Container Stability
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Solution Overview
Problem
The existing preform handling devices face challenges in reliably transferring wide-mouth container preforms with tilted flanges, leading to supply failures and decreased throughput due to the lack of standardized flange dimensions and support mechanisms, which cause preforms to tilt and fail to engage with the star wheel's recesses.
Innovation Solution
A preform handling device is designed with a star wheel that applies rotational force without a protruding flange or groove, accompanied by an end face guide member to support the open end face and flange guide members to stabilize the flange, allowing for stable transfer even when preforms are tilted, and a push-up mechanism to insert transfer members into the preform neck.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Shape
If a flange with small protrusion amount and small thickness is provided to conform with wide-mouth container shape, then the container shape conformity is improved, but the preform becomes difficult to handle and supply reliability deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The guide member is divided into multiple functional sections: a guide face section that provides a tilted guide surface for receiving preforms from the chute, and a support section that provides support from below. This segmentation allows each section to address specific handling challenges without requiring a large flange protrusion, thereby maintaining both shape conformity and supply reliability.
Solution Approach 2:
The guide member acts as an intermediary component between the chute and the star wheel. It receives preforms with small flange protrusions from the chute, corrects their orientation on the tilted guide face, and delivers them to the star wheel in the correct position, preventing supply failures without requiring large flange dimensions.
2Productivity
If preforms are consecutively supplied in line through a chute utilizing weight, then the supply speed is improved, but the flanges of adjacent preforms overlap causing tilting and supply failure
Solution Approach 1:
The tilted guide face of the guide member provides preliminary anti-action by creating a slope that prevents the flanges of adjacent preforms from overlapping. As preforms slide down the tilted guide face, they are naturally spaced and oriented correctly before reaching the star wheel, counteracting the tilting effect that would otherwise occur during consecutive supply.
3Manufacturing precision
If a star wheel with protruding flange and groove is used to restrict upward-downward movement, then the preform positioning is improved, but tilted preforms cannot be properly engaged leading to supply failure
Solution Approach 1:
The guide member performs preliminary action by correcting the orientation and position of preforms before they reach the star wheel. By the time preforms are transferred to the star wheel, they are already properly aligned and positioned, eliminating the need for the star wheel to handle tilted preforms and preventing supply failures.
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
This configuration enables continuous and stable preform transfer without supply failures, maintaining throughput by ensuring the preform is supported and aligned correctly, even with small flange protrusions, preventing tilting and ensuring proper engagement with the transfer mechanism.
Implementation Method 1
a star wheel that pushes part of the preform that is situated above the flange to rotationally transfer the preform from an upstream region to a downstream region
Implementation Method 2
Such a preform is consecutively supplied to a blow molding device, a neck crystallization device, or the like along a tilted guideway (chute) by utilizing the weight of the preform
Data Source
AI summary
A preform has a flange that protrudes outward at a neck, and is supplied in an inverted state. A preform handling device includes a star wheel that is configured so that the preform is supplied to each of a plurality of depressions that are formed in an outer circumferential part of a wheel, and pushes the preform to rotationally transfer the preform from an upstream region to a downstream region, an end face guide member that is provided in the upstream region so as to be situated under the preform and that support and guide an open end face of the preform, and a pair of flange guide members that are provided in the downstream region and that support and guide a lower side of the flange of the preform.