In the early morning, together with the colleagues of our partner ATD, we arrived at the production site of a large coffee producer in Belgium to install a leak tester. And not just any leak tester; our semi-inline vacuum leak tester. The conveyer belt reroutes sample packaging to our leak tester to test them. The project was delayed for 6 months due to Covid. Finally with our QR-code we could at last install the leak tester on-site.
The leak tester was placed in the correct location and we were ready to start some test runs. The conveyor belts of the leak testers were connected to the conveyor belts of the manufacturer so the coffee packs could be tested directly from production to find leaks normally only visible after 48 hours.
The route of a vacuum coffee pack
The coffee pack easily slides over to the Oxipack conveyer belt, where it is placed in a queue. When in place, the pack will be squeezed slightly to determine whether the package is soft. Of course, a soft pack is leak so there is no need to test it. After this tactile test, the package proceeds to either the rejection slide, or to the measuring chamber. The measuring chamber will embrace the pack tightly and measure whether there is a difference in pressure (=leak) in the packaging. The gripping fingers will then pick up the coffee pack and based on the result, the pack will return to production or proceed to the reject lane for further investigation.
Installation
The installation and training in Dutch and French went smoothly and the leak tester now works like a charm. This saves the company storage and “simple” work like squeezing coffee packs. After an extensive tour through the factory, we returned home in good spirits. It’s a great feeling to see such a remarkable leak tester contribute to product quality.
~The Oxipack Sales & Project Engineers
