ALTech have designed a machine for Parks London, a long established premium manufacturer of natural wax candles and glycerine diffusers. Parks required an economical and highly flexible machine, predominantly for wraparound labelling on candles and diffuser bottles, but also for flat sided labelling of the candle display boxes.
In addition to the range of products to be labelled, many of the candles were tapered to their base, which can be challenging, particularly in the case of labelling cylindrical products.
Our solution was a tailor built version of our extremely well proven ALbelt C labelling machine; an entry level conveyor based wraparound system combining our ALstep labelling head. By adding wraparound modules of our ALline inline machine series we were able to achieve Parks’ varied labelling requirements.
The system is designed to label cylindrical products in a direct wraparound format – with a rotating side belt and sponged counter plate placed on the peeler bar of the ALstep labelling head. This rotates the product just as the label is fed out onto it for a partial or full wraparound label result.
To maintain the spacing of the product on the conveyor they are rotated at twice the speed of the transport belt; the ALstep labelling head is then matched to this rotation speed. For flat sided products a simple T-switch allows the machine to automatically change this synchronisation from the wraparound side belt to the main transport belt. The rubberised rear counter plate (used to rotate cylindrical products) is replaced by a low friction guide, and to minimise changeover adjustments, even the wraparound belt is synchronised to the main conveyor speed and acts as an adaption roller.
The flexible and robust base design of our ALbelt C machine allows many of the modules of our larger ALline series to be used – including our two axis floating plate precision inclination system. ALbelt C machines can be inclined manually as standard, but when regularly moving between straight sided and angled tapered products (where the inclination must be precisely matched), our inclination table allows precision adjustment and repeatable setup to hugely optimise changeover’s.
To further aid efficiency, due to the high labelling speed of the ALbelt C, Parks supplemented the line with a rotary outfeed table; this allows labelled products to accumulate whilst feeding the machine at the front end.
Due to the batch production of the candles and diffusers, the product is manually fed onto the conveyor; this was one of the key reasons for selecting an ALbelt level machine as a starting point for the solution. ALTech’s higher level ALline systems (specifically the ALline C) include an automatic spacing and slat belt conveyor systems as standard, and so, are more akin to in-line use. The flexibility of Parks’ ALbelt C machine will, however, allow them to use it in-line should their future needs require.
