More safety and efficiency in line with RobaFeed3

The RobaFeed3 automatic loading system and the GlueFill granule adhesive container installed on the Robatech hot melt glue melters improve operator safety, reduce downtime and optimize productivity. This is confirmed by Schützengarten AG, a Swiss beer producer who, in 2016, integrated them on its dry area plants.

In 2016 the Schützengarten AG brewery renewed the entire “DRY” section of its bottling department - where the bottles are packaged in cardboard boxes. KHS (Dortmund) being tasked with the study and project implementation, the analysis first of all considered the packaging line, supplied by Gerhard Schubert, which was to be equipped with a Robatech adhesive application system – Robatec being Schützengarten’s historic partner, appreciated for the quality of the systems and the service.
At the time of commissioning of the new production line, the Robatech system adopted for gluing the flaps and closing the shipping boxes included two Concept Diamond melters with manual loading of granule adhesive and ten SX2 Diamond applicator guns with relative electrically heated tubes.

Criticalities overcome with a simple retrofit
The Schützengarten packaging plant needed to produce some  27,000 bottles/hour, imposing - every twenty minutes - manual filling with adhesive in granules of the melting tanks which, although equipped with a sensor and relative minimum level alarm - had to be constantly monitored for topping up operations.
If the latter procedure is to be performed with such high frequencies, the risks of burns for the operators increase, since the tank of a smelting device reaches temperatures up to 200° C. Furthermore, the flow of cold air during opening becomes a further critical factor, since the optimum bonding is guaranteed only if the adhesive is kept at a constant temperature.
When Jürg Baumann, Robatech’s Swiss Area Sales Manager, visited Schützengarten at the end of 2016 to analyse the integrated hotmelt systems, he immediately realized that, in the adhesive application area, the safety, quality and efficiency of the whole system could be significantly improved.
For this reason, he proposed retrofitting on existing systems, convincing the customer to switch to the automatic granule adhesive loading system, consisting of RobaFeed 3 and the related GlueFill L container (in this case the larger variant was chosen).

From manual to automatic. With this system, in fact, the adhesive need no longer be hot-inserted directly into the smelter tank - as happens in the manual procedure - but in the special GlueFill container which, separated from the heat sources, does not reach excessively high temperatures. Furthermore, as soon as the filling level is lowered beyond the critical threshold, GlueFill automatically conveys the granulate into the tank, leading to greater operator safety.
As Holger Gärtner, Filling Manager of Schützengarten pointed out, The automatic granule adhesive loading system works at full speed from day one and the tank only needs to be filled every two hours. The investment hence was repaid immediately, also because we are able to avoid production stops».