APPARATUS, SYSTEM, AND METHOD FOR HIGH SPEED CONTAINER FILLING

Abstract

A high-speed container filling machine, utilizing absolute servo motor architecture, processes and delivers small items, such as pouch style desiccants, when provided on a continuous reel, or be switched over to dispense canister style desiccants provided loose in bulk. A proximity sensing device prevents the insertion of an empty, or partially filled, pouch desiccant.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application claims priority to U.S. Provisional Application No. 62/418,218, filed Nov. 6, 2016, which is hereby incorporated by reference as if submitted in its entirety.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

This invention relates to the field of container filling and more particularly, to an apparatus, system and method for the detection of and high speed delivery of media into a container.

BACKGROUND

The use of desiccants in product packaging is well established and widespread throughout a variety of industries. The most common application is for moisture absorption and humidity control for susceptible products, although other desiccant types are used to absorb oxygen, for example. Desiccants appear in packaging containers for human ingestibles as well as, for example, consumer electronics. One of the most easily recognized uses in protecting ingestibles is in the pharmaceutical and nutraceutical applications, where a pouch or canister style desiccant can be found amidst the tablets or vitamins in their plastic containers, improving shelf life for the products whose efficacy might otherwise be compromised by exposure to moisture, or oxygen. The need for machines to dispense these desiccants in relatively high speed applications is well established and currently being met by a variety of machine manufacturers. The need for increasing packaging line speeds, compounded by installing greater quantities of commonly sized desiccants into large containers, and also to handle a growing range of physical desiccant sizes that must be handled, have all added considerable complication and challenge to machine builders.

Current machines, including machine offerings by Omega Design, can meet line rates of up to 300 containers per minute (cpm) so long as no more than a single small desiccant is being discharged into each passing container. This then represents the current industrywide practical upper limit on maximum possible container discharge rates. Pharmaceutical manufacturers however are, with ever increasing frequency, seeking to further extend product shelf life by inserting more desiccants into each container, and especially for samples containers which might linger in a doctor's office. Samples containers have very small quantities of tablets and so then often run at the highest line speeds since the tablet filling machines are no longer the line pacing machine.

Furthermore, in order to optimize materials purchases, they also then seek to use their most commonly purchased bulk desiccant media, often a small 1 or 2 gram desiccant, even when 4, 6 or even 8 grams of desiccant are required, and so then are often requesting multiple drops of these smaller desiccants into these containers and with minimal impact to line speeds they simultaneously seek to increase. So the desire to be able to discharge up to 600 (or more) of these smaller desiccants per minute is currently compromised by the state-of-the-art limitations of dispensing machines, and machine manufacturers have instead responded by mounting two (or more) of their current dispensing heads to a common frame, a costly and complex proposition.

It is of particular importance to industries producing ingestibles such as foods or pharmaceuticals, where the moisture absorbing properties of the desiccant aid in arresting product degradation and so then extending a product's useable sell-by period and also its shelf life. Within the pharmaceutical manufacturing world, product efficacy studies are completed as part of being granted approvals for a drug's manufacture, and inserting the requisite desiccant(s) into the container is, at least from one perspective, considered nearly as important as inserting the tablets themselves. Woe be to the manufacturing line should a loose desiccant be found on the floor underneath a conveyor or machine during a line's operation. The entire line is stopped immediately and an entire day's worth of production may be torn apart, skid by skid, container by container, until the container missing its desiccant has been found, so dire might be the consequences should it instead reach a pharmacist's, or a supermarket's, shelf. Given the capabilities of today's insertion machines, it actually is not very often that a machine misses its target and discharges a desiccant that winds up on the floor. But it is possible, and so a desiccant ‘on the loose’ is a call to arms, and a very expensive call at that.

Less well known however is the possibility that a desiccant carrier (pouch or canister) may be empty of any desiccant media, the silicon sand for instance that usually fills them. No manufacturing process is 100% defect free and on occasions there is produced an empty pouch or canister which is then included along with the rest, and is practicably undetectable until after the point of insertion. Most pouch machines will simply cut the empty pouch from its continuous reel and insert it into the waiting (or passing) container, optical sensors confirming by its passage that ‘something’ went into the container as expected, fulfilling the expectation then that it was a packet filled with media.

Efforts to detect this are today typically attempted using expensive checkweigh machines. When these machines are not already included in the upfront design of a production line then there is a significant incremental cost to include one to imply to detect empty desiccant carriers. Another alternate technology might be an x-ray machine, an even more expensive proposition and with questionable effectiveness depending on the number of pouches being inserted and their final resting position in the bottom of the container. The very best way to avoid the problem altogether is not to insert an empty desiccant media in the first place.

BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

An apparatus, system and method in the field of bottle contents delivery and more particularly, to an apparatus, system and method for the high speed delivery of contents into a container, is disclosed. A servo-controlled machine detects, within a certain number of degrees of drive-wheel rotation, that the tell-tale bulge of a filled pouch should arrive and cause the proximity sensor to separate a pouch from a reel to be subsequently delivered to a container, based on user-programmed parameters.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

This disclosure is illustrated by way of example and not by way of limitation in the accompanying figure(s). The figure(s) may, alone or in combination, illustrate one or more embodiments of the disclosure. Elements illustrated in the figure(s) are not necessarily drawn to scale. Reference labels may be repeated among the figures to indicate corresponding or analogous elements.

The detailed description makes reference to the accompanying figures in which:

FIG. 1 illustrates a front-view of at least one embodiment of the disclosed invention;

FIG. 2 illustrates a close-up front view of at least one embodiment of the disclosed invention;

FIG. 3 illustrates another of at least one embodiment of the disclosed invention;

FIG. 4 illustrates a stripped down view of at least one embodiment of the disclosed invention;

FIG. 5 illustrates a cut-out side view of the disclosed invention;

FIG. 6 illustrates another view of at least one embodiment of the disclosed invention;

FIG. 7 is a workflow diagram of at least one embodiment of the disclosed invention;

FIG. 8 illustrates exemplary pouch-style desiccants; and

FIG. 9 illustrates another workflow diagram of at least one additional embodiment of the disclosed invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

It is to be understood that the figures and descriptions of the present invention have been simplified to illustrate elements that are relevant for a clear understanding of the present invention, while eliminating, for the purpose of clarity, many other elements found in typical document processing systems and methods. Those of ordinary skill in the art may recognize that other elements and/or steps are desirable and/or required in implementing the present invention. However, because such elements and steps are well known in the art, and because they do not facilitate a better understanding of the present invention, a discussion of such elements and steps is not provided herein. The disclosure herein is directed to all such variations and modifications to such elements and methods known to those skilled in the art.

Embodiments are provided throughout so that this disclosure is sufficiently thorough and fully conveys the scope of the disclosed embodiments to those who are skilled in the art. Numerous specific details are set forth, such as examples of specific components, devices, and methods, to provide a thorough understanding of embodiments of the present disclosure. Nevertheless, it will be apparent to those skilled in the art that certain specific disclosed details need not be employed, and that exemplary embodiments may be embodied in different forms. As such, the exemplary embodiments should not be construed to limit the scope of the disclosure. As referenced above, in some exemplary embodiments, well-known processes, well-known device structures, and well-known technologies may not be described in detail.

The terminology used herein is for the purpose of describing particular exemplary embodiments only and is not intended to be limiting. For example, as used herein, the singular forms “a,” “an,” and “the” may be intended to include the plural forms as well, unless the context clearly indicates otherwise. The terms “comprises,” “comprising,” “including,” and “having” are inclusive and therefore specify the presence of stated features, integers, steps, operations, elements, and/or components, but do not preclude the presence or addition of one or more other features, integers, steps, operations, elements, components, and/or groups thereof. The steps, processes, and operations described herein are not to be construed as necessarily requiring their respective performance in the particular order discussed or illustrated, unless specifically identified as a preferred or required order of performance. It is also to be understood that additional or alternative steps may be employed, in place of or in conjunction with the disclosed aspects.

When an element or layer is referred to as being “on,” “engaged to,” “connected to,” or “coupled to” another element or layer, it may be directly on, engaged, connected or coupled to the other element or layer, or intervening elements or layers may be present, unless clearly indicated otherwise. In contrast, when an element is referred to as being “directly on,” “directly engaged to,” “directly connected to,” or “directly coupled to” another element or layer, there may be no intervening elements or layers present. Other words used to describe the relationship between elements should be interpreted in a like fashion (e.g., “between” versus “directly between,” “adjacent” versus “directly adjacent,” etc.). Further, as used herein the term “and/or” includes any and all combinations of one or more of the associated listed items.

Yet further, although the terms first, second, third, etc. may be used herein to describe various elements, components, regions, layers and/or sections, these elements, components, regions, layers and/or sections should not be limited by these terms. These terms may be only used to distinguish one element, component, region, layer or section from another element, component, region, layer or section. Terms such as “first,” “second,” and other numerical terms when used herein do not imply a sequence or order unless clearly indicated by the context. Thus, a first element, component, region, layer or section discussed below could be termed a second element, component, region, layer, or section without departing from the teachings of the exemplary embodiments.

In an embodiment of the present invention, a machine may process small items, such as either pouch style desiccants, when provided on a continuous reel, or be switched over to dispense canister style desiccants provided loose in bulk. Such a machine is the first of its kind to process both styles of media using the absolute servo motor architecture being described.

Regardless, the desiccant type incoming desiccant media may be fed into the machine from above. For example, a continuous reel of pouches may flow through a purpose-built funnel sized to the desiccant (or other bottle addition) and which guides the otherwise flexible desiccant stream into the drive mechanisms. For canisters, a purpose built drop chute may also be sized to the specific media to accomplish substantially the same effect. In each instance, the desiccants may be processed through the machine and into passing containers via motorized drive wheels.

In an embodiment of the present invention, the filling machine may manage the infeed of the incoming desiccant supply and may also discharge individual desiccants. In an embodiment of the present invention, two independent but similar systems may accomplish this, each employing a pair of opposing drive wheels and each under the control of their own servo drive motor. For example, one wheel in each pair may be fixed and the other may be spring-loaded so that it applies constant pressure to the desiccants in between.

For example, an upper pair of wheels may be responsible to manage the infeed of pouch-type desiccants. In an embodiment of the present invention, a similar pair of opposing drive wheels may be positioned lower in the pouch desiccant travel path and may perform three functions. The first may coordinate with the upper pair to simultaneously grip and control the pouch stream. The second may coordinate with the upper pair of wheels to optimize the cutting of a single pouch from the reel, and the third may then discharge the severed pouch into a container.

As further illustrated in diagram 100 of FIG. 1, when canister desiccants are used, the upper wheels may be unused. The lower drive wheels used for pouch desiccants 102 may be driven by shafts of extended length. For canister dispensing, an additional set of outer drive wheels may be added, outboard of the pouch wheels, on these extensions. Only these lower wheels 110 may be used to discharge the canisters which are fed by other equipment a drop chute and then rely on gravity to feed them into the discharge wheels.

As previously described, the machine may incorporate two pairs of opposing drive wheels, arranged in a top-and-bottom architecture. Either pair may be driven by its own servo motor and within each pair the opposing wheels may be mechanically geared together so that the left and right wheels turn clockwise and counter-clockwise respectively (or vice versa), and in unison. The separate servo motors may allow each pair to be driven independently of the other and/or to also be actuated in response to, in unison with, or according to any mathematical algorithm that would relate and coordinate their movements, allowing the separate pairs to behave as if they were mechanically linked one moment, or to otherwise operate with complete independence when warranted, all under control of a PLC and embedded subroutines. This is critical to being able to optimize the machine's performance for each and every desiccants type and size it may be asked to process.

The upper pair of drive wheels 108 may be used to pull a continuous stream of connected pouches from a supply reel and deliver them into the machine upon demand. A purpose designed funnel 104 may be used to pre-orient, position and control the incoming stream so that they may be repeatability presented with some precision to the receiving drive wheels. For example, most manufacturers of the reeled pouch desiccants themselves follows a practice by which each pair of pouches are connected by a web that incorporates some specific physical feature which can then be detected by a variety of sensing strategies. Sometimes the feature is a hole cut into the web; other times it is a semi-opaque opening; other times it may be side notches.

Various sensors may then be commonly employed with which to detect these connecting webs. An advantage of the present invention, because substantially all managed motion is servo controlled, is that sensors may be then be told specifically ‘when’ to look for the feature (or rather, the machine's PLC may be programmed to know when to ‘listen’ to a sensor report). Otherwise sensors are in a perpetual state of alertness, constantly sensing and reporting, and this can add unnecessary data processing events that consume (and so expand) the PLC's processing time, which can reduce machine throughput.

A move to ‘advance the next pouch’ may be initiated when the lowest pouch has been cut by pouch cutter 106 from the rest of its companions on the incoming stream.

Cutting the Pouch

In an embodiment of the present invention, and as illustrated by diagram 200 of FIG. 2, upper and lower drive wheel pairs 108 and 110 may be separated by a distance sufficient to fit a cutting blade 106 and anvil 202 between them. In an embodiment of the present invention, both the cutting blade and anvil may be connected through a common mechanical linkage and made to move by a simple pneumatic cylinder. Pneumatic cylinders are perfectly fine automation devices when speeds are slow and time is available both for the chain of usual events that manage the delivery of compressed air and also then to tolerate the inevitable variability in timing of the actual event. However, the higher speed requirements of the present invention warrant much finer and precise timing of events, as well as its absolute speed, and so too is the actuation of the cutting blade itself also driven by its own servo motor. The rotary motion of its servo motor may be converted into a horizontal and perfectly linear motion of the blade, which glides along its own precision linear rail, along a fixed range of travel which has been dimensioned so as to penetrate into the anvil by a specific amount, as illustrated in FIG. 2.

Coordinated and Independent Movement

The upper drive wheels may advance the pouch stream into the lower wheels, which themselves may have been simultaneously actuated to discharge a previously cut pouch. The reel may be eventually captured and held in the grip of both pairs of wheels. Recall that every desiccant on a reel may be of the same length and may employ the same feature in their connecting webs, and that it is furthermore an embodiment of the present invention to cut the pouches as closely as is possible to the exact center of this connecting web.

Once the connecting web feature has been detected, a program associated with the present invention may know with substantial and/or exact precision how much additional distance the reel must be advanced in order to bring the web feature in line with the cutting system. The servo motors, via their own built in position encoders, may simply actuate the pre-programmed number of rotational degrees which its program knows correspond to the required advance distance. In an embodiment of the present invention, the servo motor control may allow the cutting action to be initiated at a time when the pouches are still being advanced by the drive wheels, giving the cutter a ‘head start’. In contrast, one would usually bring the reel to a stopped position before actuating a pneumatic cylinder, adding precious time to the process cycle and slowing throughput. The speed and timing of the wheels and cutter motions may be controlled and ‘electronically geared’ together through position-relating algorithms, and so assure the simultaneous arrival of the blade with the arrival of the target web, wasting no time and so assuring maximum possible throughput.

At the conclusion of the blade's extend stroke, the pouch may have been cut. If advantageous, the lower drive wheels may be commanded to begin discharging the cut pouch at the same moment the cutter blade begins its retraction move, giving the discharge move its own head start, even if only a few milliseconds. The upper drive wheels 108 may then be commanded to advance the reel stream downward precisely when the cutter edge has ‘cleared the lane’, thus giving both motions their best advantage of being started at the earliest possible time. The lower wheels 110 may be commanded to discharge the cut pouch at whatever speed might be necessary to assure insertion into the passing container below, and if necessary to then decelerate and match the speed of the incoming pouch being advanced it into its space by upper drive wheels rotating at a potentially different speed.

One final ‘move’ further optimizes the cutter's performance. As discussed, once captured in both sets of drive wheels, the pouch stream is advanced so that the web may be precisely aligned on center with the cutter blade. At that instant, in an embodiment of the present invention, the lower drive wheel motor may be commanded to apply a certain torque to at least one of the drive wheels, sufficient to create tension in the pouch-web but without actually trying to move the pouch to some altered position. Tension may promote a more exact, and faster, cutting action. In this way, servo motors may function according to position, velocity or torque, with each control mode invoked as necessary to optimize performance.

In an embodiment of the present invention, at least about the moment when the cutting is completed the upper infeed pouch stream remains captured within the upper drive wheels and the recently cut pouch is still captured in the lower discharge wheels. Owing to servo motion control, the exact physical locations of each may be known, enabled in no small part because the ‘mean’ length of each pouch on the reel is also known, which factors into the oncoming moves. As discussed hereinabove, ‘advancing the pouch’ may be done coincident with the lower drive wheels to also ‘dispense the pouch’ just previously cut, and in so doing cause it to be inserted into the awaiting container beneath. This simultaneously ‘clears the lane’ so that the lower drive wheels may then accept the next arriving, lower pouch. The independence of actuation allowed by the machine's architecture permits each move to be optimized independent of the other, even though they must occur together, as will be discussed in more detail below.

In an embodiment of the present invention, when the moves are initiated, both sets of drive wheels are set into whatever motions have been programmed for them, and the pouches begin their movements. The logic of the present invention may initiate the lower drive wheels motion slightly earlier than the upper wheels and in fact accelerated to a speed greater than that which the upper wheels will then feed in the next uncut pouch, in order to create separation and so preclude any overlap. Because of the exacting nature of position control for all pouches, the lower drive wheels need only be activated for a certain degrees of rotation at their higher speed in order to move whatever length of pouch was left extending above it (that is, in the void between the wheel pairs) after the cutting has completed. Once this exact length of pouch has been ‘processed’ by the lower wheels, its speed can be reduced to then match the upper wheels so that the incoming pouch will be captured by the lower wheels just a few milliseconds after they have discharged the previous cut pouch.

At least one millisecond later, and actually known to the machine in terms of length of pouch processed (i.e., degrees of wheel rotation), the web feature may be expected to be approaching the sensor position and so the sensor may then monitor. In an embodiment of the present invention, when the sensor detects the web feature, the two sets of drive wheels may act in unison to advance the connected pouches through a specific additional degrees of rotation so that the center of the web feature is then exactly aligned with the cutter blade. Furthermore, at the end of that move, the lower drive wheels may then be over-torqued by the slightest amount relative to the stationary upper wheels, to place the connected pair of captured pouches under tension. Once in position, a separate servo actuated cutter then separates them. In an embodiment of the present invention, the employing of servo motion control in all dynamic elements of the machine's operation, and the ‘electronically gearing’ the three servo motors' motions, may allow events like cutting the pouches apart to be coordinated while supporting events are still in motion or, are just completing their motions, and so the necessity of bringing motions to a full stop, and in so doing slow throughput, are minimized or eliminated.

Verification of Insertion

A critical requirement of pharmaceutical manufacturers in particular is the need to verify that a desiccant has in fact been dispensed into a container. The only way to effect this with 100% certainty is to after-the-fact visually inspect every container for the presence of desiccant(s), which in addition to being very expensive as speeds increase grows more problematic when multiple desiccants must be inspected for. Expensive X-Ray technologies have been employed in lieu of human or camera inspection but the multiple desiccant scenario challenges even these technologies, and financial justification for these expensive systems anyway eludes all but the biggest pharmaceutical companies. So alternate strategies are usually employed that can be likened to ‘circumstantial evidence’ in proving desiccant insertion or, put in simpler terms, the ‘now-you-see-me-now-you-don't-so-I-must-be-in-the-container’ approach.

The use of servo motion control of the present invention may raise the level of certainty of this style of verification to nearly the equivalent of 100% visual inspection for a single desiccant insertion, and may exceed the efficacy of vision inspection or x-ray technology for multiple desiccant drops into a single container, where those other technologies often prove incapable of distinguishing the true number of desiccants.

In an embodiment of the present invention, improvement in insertion verification for the pouch application may be accomplished by: a) fitting the machine with a purpose designed discharge funnel and surrounding sensors, and/or b) combining the knowledge of a pouch's position based on servo motor encoder feedback, and its speed of discharge, to enhance the logic supporting the verification conclusion. While still considered a ‘circumstantial’ inspection strategy, it is superior to prior art, and especially for a multiple drop scenario.

A purpose designed discharge chute 204 may be fitted below the pouch discharge wheels. It may be sized to the length of the pouch being inserted, which may vary significantly based on the weight of desiccant per pouch (from ½ gram to 6 are common in pharma applications). The single sensor used is illustrated in each of three typical positions it might occupy, upper, mid, and lower positions.

In an embodiment of the present invention, a sensor may be used to detect both the arrival of a severed pouch's leading edge (because the severed pouch blocks the sensor while it passes by) and quickly thereafter the presence of its trailing edge when the sensor is no longer blocked. A second sensor may be mounted on an adjustable arm that may be used to confirm the presence of a container during the pouch insertion. All of these components may be first fitted and the machine height then adjusted so that the top edge of passing containers very nearly brushes the lower edge of this discharge chute, so that virtually no physical escape point exists through which a pouch might errantly escape. The ‘circumstantial’ verification method in use then, in its simplest implementation, combines the ‘now you see it, now you don't’ logic with the certainty of a container present sensor, and the elimination of alternate escape routes, to conclude that the dispensed desiccant observed had nowhere else to go but into the container via the discharge funnel.

The unique use of servos to control movement of the desiccant media in this invention provides another way to further augment the certainty of the circumstantial conclusion and preclude other sorts of insertion failures. The cut pouch may be physically captive within the lower drive wheels during the discharge (insertion) move. It is well accepted that the mean length of all pouches in a reel is tightly controlled by the desiccant manufacturer, and enjoys very little variability. The variability in finish cut length of any particular desiccant is purely a function of the machine which could introduce additional variability in that length. The use of high-speed processing and servo motors to control motion minimizes this to its lowest practical level in this application, because each pouch is placed in an exact position for cutting, and that after cutting, its true position, and length, is also known.

Since the length and position of the cut pouch is known with heretofore unparalleled precision, the confirmation sensor knows when it should be looking for both the leading and trailing edges as the pouch is being discharged, and so the sensor may be monitored only during a narrow window of time to assure that it ‘sees’ the trailing edge pass when it should see it. In this sense the verification logic of the present invention cannot be fooled by two unrelated motions simply because they occurred in the expected sequence. If for any reason the event does not happen when expected, the machine will fault and shut down until the cause can be understood and remediated. Thus, the risk of a container escaping without its requisite number of desiccants, a grievous ‘shut down the line’ event in the pharmaceutical world, is enhanced beyond current technology.

Canister Dispensing

As illustrated in diagram 300 of FIG. 3, pouch media may be pulled through the machine by the upper drive wheels, the canister desiccants may rely primarily on gravity to feed them into the machine for dispensing. When the upper drive wheels are not used, nor is the infeed pouch funnel. Only the lower drive wheels' servo motor is used to provide the motive force which, as was mentioned earlier, reduces wear and tear over prior designs.

As mentioned, additional mechanisms may be attached to the machine so that its basic architecture may now be used to feed this distinctly different desiccant media. There are two primary mechanisms that make it possible for this machine to also handle these canisters: the drop chute and sensors assembly, and the drive wheel extensions 302.

In an embodiment of the present invention, the canister drive wheels are first fitted to the existing pair of lower drive shafts. Each of these shafts are purpose designed to extend longer than are needed by the pouch drive wheels, and so allow the addition of this second set of drive wheels with only minimal effort and tooling. The original drive wheels used to dispense pouches remain in their usual place, and these new drive wheels, purpose designed for specific canister diameters, are fitted in front of them on the same shafts.

Although the pouch drive wheels may also physically move the canisters as well. In an embodiment of the present invention, The physical arrangement for these components places the drop chute 308 and (additional) drive wheels outboard of the pouch travel path, so that when the machine is set up for canister insertion, the upper drive wheels and servo section are by-passed, saving wear and tear on that portion of the system. To emphasize then, the travel path of canister desiccants is not the same travel path as is used for the pouches.

The drop chute 308 may be typically fabricated from stainless steel tubing, selected so that its ID will both control, and yet allow free passage of, a specific canister diameter and length, even all around any necessary arc radius which the tube design must include. The chute has reliefs machined within its sidewalls that allow the drive wheels to extend far enough into the cylindrical space through which the canisters travel to allow the pair of outboard drive wheels to control them. The length of the drop chute is designed such that a portion of it may always extend below the lower discharge wheels, no matter the length of the desiccant, and that it also includes two sensors.

The sensors in this lower section may be positioned to detect the presence or absence of a canister and/or the momentary gap created when one is discharged. A third sensor positioned much higher on the same drop chute may be used to trigger secondary feeding mechanisms to deliver more desiccants to the drop chute. For the purposes of the following descriptions, this upper most sensor high up on the drop chute will be referred to as sensor1. In descending order then, the two sensors positioned on the lower part of the drop chute 308 beneath the discharge wheels will be referred to as sensor2 (304) and sensor3 (308) respectively.

The Canister Advance Move and Verification

As one canister is discharged another falls into the outboard lower drive wheels from the upper stack. Because the machine must always know it processed the correct quantity of canisters required, servo motion control is combined with the bottom two sensors to, like the pouches, provide verification. The use of servo motors provide yet another advantage for canister insertion that lesser motors cannot.

At the initiation of a dispense move sensor2 is partially blocked by a waiting canister held captive by the spring pressure of the outboard lower drive wheel pair. The presence of a waiting canister is a necessary element to even beginning the discharge move; the machine of the present invention may fault out if the sensor cannot detect an available canister. By programming in a high acceleration ramp for the start of the canister discharge move, the canister can be made to separate from the other canisters stacked above it in the drop chute faster than they will naturally fall under just gravity, creating a momentary and detectable separation. So again, the sensor knows that after a certain degrees of wheel rotation (corresponding to the ‘free’ length of the canister extending above the drive wheel tangent point) it should expect to see its trailing edge, confirming that the canister has been successfully moved, ‘on schedule’, and was not somehow jammed up from moving downward.

The discharging canister has now just been sent downward towards its awaiting container, traveling at a speed slightly faster than it could by then have achieved just under the force of gravity, although it is now under the motive force of gravity alone. Sensor3 is positioned near the bottom most edge of the drop chute and is now waiting for the passage of the oncoming desiccant. Like the pouches, the machine will have been adjusted so that the gap between the lowest edge of the drop chute and the upper edge of the passing containers is as close as possible, leaving no escape path through which the desiccant can travel other than into the container. And, as before, the aforementioned container-present sensor is also still employed to verify the presence of a waiting container. Sensor3 will thus expect to find itself blocked when the canister's leading edge arrives and then suddenly unblocked as its trailing edge passes, and all according to a tight and programmable time window, providing the enhanced measure of verification confidence as was done with the pouches. Were a misplaced or jammed container to block the canister from dropping for example, the stalled canister, still then blocking sensor3 when it wasn't expected to be, then faults the machine.

Because the exact length of the canisters is known, and furthermore the exact length of the ‘free’ canister body above the drive wheels' tangent point, so too do we know the exact number of degrees with which to rotate the drive wheels in order to expel the canister. Once those degrees of rotation are complete the desiccant is free and the wheels are then decelerated in anticipation of the next desiccant arriving. That canister has begun falling under the influence of gravity immediately when the one below it was pulled away, but because of the fashion in which the lowest canister has been accelerated for discharge, a ‘gap’ is created between them. Sensor2 had been blocked by the lower canister until its trailing edge passed whereupon it became unblocked. When sensor2 is blocked once again the machine knows that the next canister has arrived, and will then index a precise amount to stage that canister so that a precise length of the canister may be staged below the drive wheels and also a precise amount above. And so the process repeats, and at speeds (so far) that have exceeded 600 canisters/minute.

The present invention incorporates design advantages heretofore not exploited in the prior art of processing both canister and pouch media, and possibly no other single-desiccant machines, apparatus, or methods. Improvements over these machines that have enabled a more than doubling of desiccant throughput include: use of servo motors to effect all managed machine motions; changing to a top to bottom drive motor architecture instead of either a single motor or dual side-to-side motor architecture; use of media specific funnels and drop chutes to assist in managing desiccant flow; fixing one side of the machine from moving; elimination of large and heavy drive belt assemblies, substituting instead pairs of lower mass drive wheels; converting from a pneumatically actuated cutter blade to a servo-controlled cutter; fixing the cut anvil and moving only a lighter cutter blade; and use of outboard drive wheel for second media type.

Prior art machines employ a variety of motor types and pneumatic actuation, most chosen to reduce costs in the lower speed applications. Substantially ail motions in the present invention (with the exception of gravity drop of canisters) are effected through servo motors. Each motor may be commanded to perform its own motions independently of other actions, in conjunction with other actions, or electronically linked to other servo actions to simulate a mechanically linked architecture, but without the moving mass and wear and tear of actual mechanisms like levers, gears, belts and bearings.

So for example, instead of the mechanical limitations of the earlier fixed belt ratio system connecting the infeed and discharge moves, the two motions are now free to be optimized for each pouch length, and so then allow complete independence of motion, or a coordinated motion, or both.

In an embodiment of the present invention, (which at the time was for pouch handling only) a single motor actuated a pair of opposing belts, which in turn were then geared to their own lower discharge wheels through a belt and pulley system. That motor proved incapable of accelerating the combined moving mass of that design with sufficient speed and so a follow-on improvement was to give each side its own motor.

So in both designs a pair of opposing drive belts pulled pouches from a reel through the machine using motor(s) which could either be an AC, DC, stepper or servo motor. Each belt assembly was then mechanically connected to its own lower discharge wheel, and a subsequent improvement in the twin motor iteration was to overdrive the lower wheels so that cut pouches would be discharged faster than incoming pouches were being provided. The ratio however was fixed regardless of the size (length) of the individual pouches, which forced compromises at the dimensional extremes and resulted in less efficient/effective delivery and less speed.

In an embodiment of the present invention, the belts may be replaced by an upper pair of opposing drive wheels operating through their own servo motor to pull in pouches from a reel. There is much less mass to accel and decel here promoting faster operating speeds, as well as lower part count and reduced cost. A separate lower pair of opposing discharge drive wheels cooperates on managing the flow and position of the continuous stream of incoming pouches and ultimately also then discharges the cut pouches, and is controlled independently by its own motor.

High-speed automation is highly correlated with the extent to which the product is physically controlled during high speed motions. Reels of pouches have practically no predictability in how they might move under force. The purpose designed funnels provide a length of incoming desiccant product that is controlled from unwanted movements so that dynamic perturbations that might otherwise create unwanted tugging or even ‘knot tying’ motions are virtually eliminated, at least at the ‘business end’ where the pouches are being guided into the drive wheels. Some machines have only perfunctory guides that fail to control the whipping motions of high speed pouch reel feeding, which also then forced the machines into lower operating speeds.

The canisters too now enjoy a drop chute design whose geometry is made integral with the wheels themselves, which also then promotes a stable flow of desiccants controlled from unwanted motions that compromise speed. In an embodiment of the present invention, each side of the two belt sides were free to articulate in response to the passing stream of pouches. In an embodiment of the present invention, only one side moves, reducing the dynamic mass which must be accelerated left and right.

In an embodiment of the present invention, elimination of large and heavy drive belt assemblies, substituting instead pairs of lower mass drive wheels may be used. This may greatly reduce the mass of components which need to be accelerated and is a critical design element in the new invention that maximizes possible throughput. Lower mass means both faster acceleration and faster sustained drive speeds, as less energy is expended overcoming the higher mass' inertia.

In an embodiment of the present invention, converting from a pneumatically actuated cutter blade to a servo-controlled cutter may be employed. In slower speed applications the variability in pneumatic actuations may be tolerable. As speeds increase the PLC signal to retract a cylinder might actually be sent before the initial extend motion has even been completed, and at the extreme speeds now being achieved the extend motion may not even have begun before the competing retract signal is sent. With servo-motion control these limitations are not only eliminated but can be coordinated with the other servo motions to time their occurrence as though mechanically linked. Speeds are limited only by the power and response time of the motors, and factored into whatever is the mass of the target being moved. The use of a servo to effect the motion provides for precise control of accel, deccel, position and velocity all of which can be optimized for maximum throughput, and regardless of desiccant length, through desiccant specific program recipes.

In an embodiment of the present invention, fixing the cut anvil and moving only a lighter cutter blade may be employed. Both the cutting blade and the cutting anvil may be made to advance together and converge on a common location, effected through a pneumatic cylinder that actuated both components through their mechanical linkages. In an embodiment of the present invention, the anvil may remain fixed and only the smaller cutter assembly is made to move on its own linear rail under servo rotary actuation. The reduction in mass being moved greatly enables reaching higher throughput speeds and is a key component in reaching higher speeds.

In an embodiment of the present invention, the use of an outboard drive wheel for a second media type may be used. This may provide significant advantages when processing canister desiccants. In some apparatuses (which also had been modified to handle both desiccant formats) each of the side-to-side motors had to continue to actuate the entire moving mass of their entire drive belt assemblies in order to engage the lower wheels for the desiccant insertion. In the new machine, only the lower wheels need to be actuated, which means less inertia must be controlled for accel and decal greatly increasing machine speeds and also reduces overall wear and tear on the machine which naturally improves its reliability and other metrics like MTBF, MTTR and MCTR.

FIG. 4 illustrates diagram 400 which is an alternate embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 5 illustrates an exemplary cut-out side view diagram 500 of the machine disclosed herein. Diagram 500 shows a plain ball bearing 502 which may be pressed flush with plate 504 and gear mounting plate 506. Additionally, the machine may include rear plate 508, as shown, along with additional bearing pressed to be flush with plate at point 510. Diagram 500 further illustrates exemplary flex coupling 512 affixed to mid shaft 514. Diagram 500 further includes upper slide bearing assembly 516 and lower slide bearing assembly 520. An exemplary sensor 518 as described herein and above is shown. It is understood that the parts highlighted in diagram 500 are not meant to be limiting nor exhaustive, but merely shown to provide clarification to aid in understanding of the disclosed invention.

FIG. 6 illustrates diagram 600 which yet another alternate embodiment of the present invention. In accordance with above, the machine of FIG. 6 includes a gravity-fed drop chute 602. In the event of canister desiccants, canister desiccants may rely primarily on gravity to feed them into the machine for dispensing via drop chute 602.

FIG. 7 shows simplified workflow diagram 700 of the disclosed invention accomplished by the machine described herein. Initially, media, such as a pouch desiccant, is fed into the machine as described above off of a roll of pouches at step 702. At step 704, a pouch separation point may be detected by one or more sensors as described above with respect to FIG. 3. Based on a detected separation point, the roll of pouches may advance a certain distance and step 706 may be performed to divide the media from the roll, such as by a cutting action via a blade as described with respect to FIG. 2. At step 708, the media may then be delivered appropriately based on predefined requirements (e.g., 1 or 2 desiccants per bottle). In an alternate embodiment, such as in the embodiment where desiccant canisters are delivered, steps 704 and 706 would not be required by the invention.

An alternate embodiment of the disclosed machine substitutes highly sensitive proximity sensors in place of conventional optical sensors to provide for physical, rather than optical, detection of pouch desiccant features, all made possible by the design of the machine itself.

Pouch desiccants used in the manufacture of pharmaceuticals are commonly provided as a long continuous stream wound on a reel, each desiccant connected to neighboring desiccants by a thin web of material. Between these webs are the individual pouches containing the desiccant media (such as silica sand), creating a bulging shape not unlike a small teabag. The stream of desiccants is fed into an insertion machine and desiccants are individually detected, cut from the reel, and then inserted into a passing container. For many years the manufacturers of these desiccant reels provided physical features within the individual webs, small notches cut on either side, or more commonly, a through hole in their center, which the machine manufacturers sensed optically, typically using through-beam sensors, that then signaled the arrival of the ‘next’ desiccant and so then trigger other actions like cutting and dispensing of the severed pouches.

Very recently, the desiccant manufacturers have been altering their manufacturing processes and sometimes these physical features have disappeared entirely, and other times semi-opaque ‘windows’ have been substituted where the holes used to be. Their expectation, it seems, was that machine manufacturers would figure out how to rearrange an array of optical sensors in some fashion, perhaps now looking at the edge of the passing desiccants, and trying to differentiate the thin web from the packet bulge. This has created a not insignificant challenge for machine manufacturers relying on optical sensing strategies alone, as tuning a single sensor, or even an array of sensors, to somehow overcome the inherent variability in pouch bulge thickness has proven more difficult than expected. FIG. 8 illustrates different desiccant pouch styles, including pouches with no physical features, pouches with semi-opaque through holes, and pouches with physical through holes. These styles are merely exemplary and are not meant to be limiting.

Referring to FIG. 9, a workflow diagram 900 is shown illustrating the process of pouch delivery. In step 902, parameters may be set via a touchscreen interface or the like to program the machine prior to desiccant delivery. Parameters set may include, but certainly not limited to, pouch type and thickness, delivery speed, container type and size, etc.

The design of pouch insertion mechanism provided herein implements the platform on which to substitute a different kind of technology that has proven successful and obviates the need for any sorts of optical sensors altogether. In the process, it also created a means of identifying a problem every bit as important as a container of tablets missing a desiccant entirely, that is; a container into which was inserted a desiccant that was empty of any of its moisture absorbing media.

As previously described, the machine, at step 904, moves pouches through the machine and into containers by trapping them between opposing pairs of servo-controlled drive rollers. There are upper and lower sets of these rollers. The upper set feeds the reel of pouches into the machine and ultimately positions the bottom-most pouch to be cut from its neighbor. Once cut from the reel the bottom set, acting independently of the upper pair, discharges the cut desiccant into the target container.

In each pair of these rollers one of the rollers is fixed in position but its mate is attached to a carriage that slides on a precision guide rail, and is kept pressed against its companion roller by spring pressure. The spring and moveable carriage allow the bulge of the desiccant pouch to separate the two wheels whilst they rotate and move the desiccant down through the machine, the wheel moving whatever distance any individual pouch requires for its clear passage. At this location, two halves of a highly sensitive proximity sensor are installed here; one side to the axis of the fixed roller the other side to the axis of the moving roller. At machine set-up, the machine's ‘zero position’ is calibrated against a section of thin web. Thereafter, as the wheels rotate to advance a pouch, the thicker part of the bulge forces the drive wheels to separate. When the wheels have just barely become separated by approximately 0.020″ (0.5 mm), for example, the sensor is ‘made’ and a signal then sent to the machine controller identifying that position as the ‘start’ of the next pouch cycle. Since each pouch is approximately identical in length on the reel, the machine knows exactly what distance (translated into degrees of wheel rotation) to move the pouch so that the trailing web is aligned in front of the cutter blade, as described previously.

Using distance technology the machine, or machines, will detect, at step 906, when a thin, separating web has been detected. In normal operation this then signals the movement of pouches the distance needed to advance it to the cutting position and thereafter to advance then to the next pouch.

Additionally, the machine detects within a certain number of degrees of drive-wheel rotation that the tell-tale bulge of a filled pouch should arrive and cause the proximity sensor to separate, step 908. And so, on a pouch by pouch basis, it can also confirm that a pouch having media content is passing or rather, when one should be passing, step 912. Consequently, it will also detect when there is no, or too little, separation of the drive rollers as a pouch is passing by, which the machine interprets as an empty, or partially filled pouch. In that circumstance it can cause the machine to fault out and stop at step 910, or it could simply advance an additional full desiccant to be inserted into the container.

Optical sensors oriented in their usual forward-facing arrangement (to ‘see’ the notches or the hole in a web) cannot reliably detect an empty pouch and so downstream check-weighing machines (or X-ray machines) might need to be installed to identify and reject a container that received one. In larger containers having many tablets, possibly many pouches, and therefore considerable weight, the checkweigher may prove insensitive enough to detect the very small discrepancy in weight that would occur if say, one of four desiccants was empty. The machine of the disclosed invention prevents the insertion of an empty or insufficiently filled pouch. The machine may be programmed with variance limits based on expected pouch thicknesses that will alert users to a partially filled pouch, with ‘tolerance levels’ that can be set by the machine user.

Variance limits may be pre-programmed based on different desiccant pouch styles. Expected pouch thicknesses may be associated with certain brands and models of known desiccants. New pouch styles may be programmed into the machine, as required.

Those of ordinary skill in the art may recognize that many modifications and variations of the present invention may be implemented without departing from the spirit or scope of the invention. Thus, it is intended that the present invention covers the modifications and variations of this invention provided they come within the scope of the appended claims and their equivalents.

Claims

1. A system for conducting high-speed container filling, the system comprising:

a continuous supply reel of one or more pouch-style desiccants;

a purpose-built funnel configured to receive the reel of one or more pouch-style desiccants;

a driving mechanism attached to the purpose-built funnel, the driving mechanism comprising: at least two pairs of opposing drive wheels; one or more sensors; and at least one cutting mechanism;

the driving mechanism configured to: advance, by the opposing drive wheels, the reel of one or more pouch-style desiccants; detect, by the opposing drive wheels, an incoming pouch; cut, at a predetermined position, the incoming pouch from the reel; and discharge the incoming pouch.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the purpose-built funnel is further configured to orient, position, and control the received one or more pouch-style desiccants.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein at least one pair of the at least two pairs of opposing drive wheels are fixed and the other pair of drive wheels are spring-loaded.

4. The system of claim 3, wherein the spring-loaded drive wheels apply constant pressure on the passing reel of one or more pouch-style desiccants.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the driving mechanism causes a fault in response to detecting, by the opposing drive wheels, the incoming pouch having insufficient thickness.