How many types of filling machine are there?
Filling machines can be broken down in to 3 main categories: manual, semi-automatic and fully automatic.
Manual Liquid Filling Machine
Manual liquid filling machines use a piston to fill a container with liquid.
This technique is known as volumetric filling and fills the same volume each time.
The amount of liquid dispensed is pre-set by the operator to ensure repeatability and can be changed within the available output of the machine (e.g. between 10-500 ml). These machines require no power supply, are compact and can usually be placed on a workbench.
The operator places the container in the filling machine and pulls the lever until the end stop is reached and the liquid is ejected from the nozzle into the container. Basically manual liquid filling machines fill one container at a time.
Semi-automatic liquid filling machines
Semi-automatic liquid filling machines function in the same way as manual filling machines, but they have a power source and can be customized with multiple spray nozzles, which means that multiple contai
ners can be filled at the same time, resulting in a significant increase in
productivity.
Many semi-automatic filling machines use the same principles as manual filli
ng machines to fill containers with liquid, but instead of pulling a lever, the operator presses a switch either by hand or by foot, depending on the filling technique used.
Semi-automatic filling machines can be either freestanding, mobile units or bench-top units that can draw liquid from a hopper or from a separate container via a feed tube.
Automatic liquid filling machines
Automatic filling machines can be either volume fillers or vacuum fillers, with the additional production advantage of bottle handling, where an entire production line can be customized (bottle washing, labeling, bottle receiving, etc.) to seamlessly move containers from the filling stage to any further process.
Typically, the containers are placed on a conveyor belt or similar device that will be needed to feed the containers into the filling machine. Caps are fed by jiggling a rotating hopper that can properly orient the caps and place them in a chute or a robotic arm that can be customized to pick up and place the caps.
The advantages of the fully automatic filling machine are fast filling speed, accurate filling, high efficiency, saving labor and time costs, suitable for companies that need to produce large quantities of products.
